Gerard Manley Hopkins - The Collected Poems

7/28/2019 Gerard Manley Hopkins - The Collected Poems

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Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1918) "Poems"

Poems

of

Gerard Manley Hopkins

now first published

Edited with notes

by

ROBERT BRIDGES

Poet Laureate

LONDON

HUMPHREY MILFORD

CATHARINAE

HVNC LIBRVM

QVI FILA EIVS CARISSIMI

POETAE DEBITAM INGENIO LAVDEM EXPECTANTIS

SERVM TAMEN MONVMENTVM ESSET

ANNVM AETATIS XCVIII AGENTI

VETERIS AMICITIAE PIGNVS

D D D

R B

Transcriber's notes: The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins contain unconventional English,accents and horizontal lines. Facsimile images of the poems as originally published are freely



available online from the Internet Archive. Please use these images to check for any errors or inadequacies in this electronic text.

The editor's endnotes refer to the page numbers of the Author's Preface and to the first pageof the Early Poems. I have therefore inserted these page numbers in round brackets: (1), (2),

etc. up to (7). For pages 1 to 7 the line numbers in this electronic version are the same as thosereferred to in the editor's endnotes.

After page 7 this text mainly follows the editor's endnotes which, apart from the occasional page reference, refer to the poems by their numbers. For example:

5. PENMAEN POOL.

In poem 26 I have retained the larger than normal spacing between the first and second wordsof the eighth line.

In poem 36 I have rendered the first word of line 28 as "Óne." In the original the accent fallson the second letter but I did not have a text character to record this accurately.

The editor's notes contain one word and, later, one phrase from the ancient Greek; these areretained but the Greek letters have been Englished.

CONTENTS

Author's Preface

Early PoemsPoems 1876-1889Unfinished Poems & Fragments

EDITORIAL

Preface to Notes Notes

OUR generation already is overpast,And thy lov'd legacy, Gerard, hath lainCoy in my home; as once thy heart was fainOf shelter, when God's terror held thee fastIn life's wild wood at Beauty and Sorrow aghast;Thy sainted sense tramme'd in ghostly pain,Thy rare ill-broker'd talent in disdain:Yet love of Christ will win man's love at last.

Hell wars without; but, dear, the while my handsGather'd thy book, I heard, this wintry day,

Thy spirit thank me, in his young delightStepping again upon the yellow sands.



we should be hearing, two rhythms are in some manner running at once and we havesomething answerable to counter-point in music, which is two or more strains of tune goingon together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm. Of this kind of verse Milton is the great master and the choruses of Samson Agonistes are written throughout in it—but with the disadvantagethat he does not let the reader clearly know what the ground-rhythm is meant to be and so

they have struck most readers as merely irregular. And in fact if you counterpoint throughout,since one only of the counter rhythms is actually heard, the other is really destroyed or cannotcome to exist, and what is written is one rhythm only and probably Sprung Rhythm, of whichI now speak.

Sprung Rhythm, as used in this book, is measured by feet of from one to four syllables,regularly, and for (4) particular effects any number of weak or slack syllables may be used. Ithas one stress, which falls on the only syllable, if there is only one, or, if there are more, thenscanning as above, on the first, and so gives rise to four sorts of feet, a monosyllable and theso-called accentual Trochee, Dactyl, and the First Paeon. And there will be four corresponding natural rhythms; but nominally the feet are mixed and any one may follow any

other. And hence Sprung Rhythm differs from Running Rhythm in having or being only onenominal rhythm, a mixed or 'logaoedic' one, instead of three, but on the other hand in havingtwice the flexibility of foot, so that any two stresses may either follow one another running or

be divided by one, two, or three slack syllables. But strict Sprung Rhythm cannot becounterpointed. In Sprung Rhythm, as in logaoedic rhythm generally, the feet are assumed to

be equally long or strong and their seeming inequality is made up by pause or stressing.

Remark also that it is natural in Sprung Rhythm for the lines to be rove over , that is for thescanning of each line immediately to take up that of the one before, so that if the first has oneor more syllables at its end the other must have so many the less at its beginning; and in factthe scanning runs on without break from the beginning, say, of a stanza to the end and all thestanza is one long strain, though written in lines asunder.

Two licences are natural to Sprung Rhythm. The one is rests, as in music; but of this anexample is scarcely to be found in this book, unless in the Echos, (5) second line. The other ishangers or outrides that is one, two, or three slack syllables added to a foot and not countingin the nominal scanning. They are so called because they seem to hang below the line or rideforward or backward from it in another dimension than the line itself, according to a principleneedless to explain here. These outriding half feet or hangers are marked by a loop underneaththem, and plenty of them will be found.

The other marks are easily understood, namely accents, where the reader might be in doubtwhich syllable should have the stress; slurs, that is loopsover syllables, to tie them together into the time of one; little loops at the end of a line to shew that the rhyme goes on to the firstletter of the next line; what in music are called pauses, to shew that the syllable should bedwelt on; and twirls, to mark reversed or counterpointed rhythm.

Note on the nature and history of Sprung Rhythm—Sprung Rhythm is the most natural of things. For (1) it is the rhythm of common speech and of written prose, when rhythm is

perceived in them. (2) It is the rhythm of all but the most monotonously regular music, so thatin the words of choruses and refrains and in songs written closely to music it arises. (3) It isfound in nursery rhymes, weather saws, and so on; because, however these may have been

once made in running rhythm, the terminations having dropped off by the change of language,



the stresses come together and so the rhythm is sprung. (4) It arises in common (6) versewhen reversed or counterpointed, for the same reason.

But nevertheless in spite of all this and though Greek and Latin lyric verse, which is wellknown, and the old English verse seen in Pierce Ploughman are in sprung rhythm, it has in

fact ceased to be used since the Elizabethan age, Greene being the last writer who can be saidto have recognised it. For perhaps there was not, down to our days, a single, even short, poemin English in which sprung rhythm is employed not for single effects or in fixed places but asthe governing principle of the scansion. I say this because the contrary has been asserted: if itis otherwise the poem should be cited.

Some of the sonnets in this book* (*See previous note.) are in five-foot, some in six-foot or Alexandrine lines.

Nos. 13 and 22 are Curtal-Sonnets, that is they are constructed in proportions resembling

those of the sonnet proper, namely 6 + 4 instead of 8 + 6, with however a halfline tailpiece (sothat the equation is rather 12/8 + 9/2 = 21/2 + 10 1/2).

(7) EARLY POEMS

1

For a Picture of

St. Dorothea

I BEAR a basket lined with grass;I am so light, I am so fair,That men must wonder as I passAnd at the basket that I bear,Where in a newly-drawn green litter Sweet flowers I carry,—sweets for bitter.

Lilies I shew you, lilies none, None in Caesar's gardens blow,— And a quince in hand,—not one

Is set upon your boughs below; Not set, because their buds not spring;Spring not, 'cause world is wintering.

But these were found in the East and SouthWhere Winter is the clime forgot.— The dewdrop on the larkspur's mouthO should it then be quenchèd not?In starry water-meads they drewThese drops: which be they? stars or dew?

Had she a quince in hand? Yet gaze:Rather it is the sizing moon.



Lo, linked heavens with milky ways!That was her larkspur row.—So soon?Sphered so fast, sweet soul?—We see

Nor fruit, nor flowers, nor Dorothy.

2

Heaven—Haven

A nun takes the veil

I HAVE desired to goWhere springs not fail,To fields where flies no sharp and sided hailAnd a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be

Where no storms come,Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,And out of the swing of the sea.

3 The Habit of Perfection

ELECTED Silence, sing to meAnd beat upon my whorlèd ear,Pipe me to pastures still and beThe music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:It is the shut, the curfew sentFrom there where all surrenders comeWhich only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark And find the uncreated light:This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,Desire not to be rinsed with wine:The can must be so sweet, the crustSo fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spendUpon the stir and keep of pride,What relish shall the censers sendAlong the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet

That want the yield of plushy sward,



But you shall walk the golden streetAnd you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the brideAnd now the marriage feast begun,

And lily-coloured clothes provideYour spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

POEMS 1876-1889

4

THE WRECK

OF THE DEUTSCHLAND

To thehappy memory of five Franciscan Nunsexiles by the Falk Lawsdrowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875

PART THE FIRST

1Thou mastering meGod! giver of breath and bread;World's strand, sway of the sea;Lord of living and dead;Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,And after it almost unmade, what with dread,Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

2

I did say yesO at lightning and lashed rod;Thou heardst me truer than tongue confessThy terror, O Christ, O God;Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trodHard down with a horror of height:And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.

3The frown of his face

Before me, the hurtle of hellBehind, where, where was a, where was a place?



I whirled out wings that spellAnd fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace

to the grace.

4I am soft siftIn an hourglass—at the wallFast, but mined with a motion, a drift,And it crowds and it combs to the fall;I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,But roped with, always, all the way down from the tallFells or flanks of the voel, a veinOf the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ's gift.

5I kiss my handTo the stars, lovely-asunder Starlight, wafting him out of it; andGlow, glory in thunder;Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder,His mystery must be instressed, stressed;For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.

6 Not out of his blissSprings the stress felt

Nor first from heaven (and few know this)Swings the stroke dealt— Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt— But it rides time like riding a river (And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss),

7It dates from dayOf his going in Galilee;Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;Manger, maiden's knee;The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,Though felt before, though in high flood yet— What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,

8

Is out with it! Oh,We lash with the best or worst



Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloeWill, mouthed to flesh-burst,Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,Brim, in a flash, full!—Hither then, last or first,To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet—

Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it—men go.

9Be adored among men,God, three-numberèd form;Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,Man's malice, with wrecking and storm.Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.

10With an anvil-dingAnd with fire in him forge thy willOr rather, rather then, stealing as SpringThrough him, melt him but master him still:Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,Make mércy in all of us, out of us allMastery, but be adored, but be adored King.

PART THE SECOND

11'Some find me a sword; someThe flange and the rail; flame,Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum,And storms bugle his fame.But wé dream we are rooted in earth—Dust!Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,Wave with the meadow, forget that there mustThe sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.

12On Saturday sailed from Bremen,American-outward-bound,Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,Two hundred souls in the round— O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessingThe goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned;Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing

Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeveeven them in?



13Into the snows she sweeps,Hurling the haven behind,The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,For the infinite air is unkind,

And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow,Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snowSpins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.

14She drove in the dark to leeward,She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock;And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of

her keel:The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock;And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheelIdle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.

15Hope had grown grey hairs,Hope had mourning on,Trenched with tears, carved with cares,Hope was twelve hours gone;And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day

Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,And lives at last were washing away:To the shrouds they took,—they shook in the hurling andhorrible airs.

16One stirred from the rigging to saveThe wild woman-kind below,With a rope's end round the man, handy and brave— He was pitched to his death at a blow,

For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew:They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and froThrough the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he doWith the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?

17They fought with God's cold— And they could not and fell to the deck (Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolledWith the sea-romp over the wreck.

Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble,

The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check—



Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced— Stigma, signal, cinquefoil tokenFor lettering of the lamb's fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.

23

Joy fall to thee, father Francis,Drawn to the Life that died;With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, hisLovescape crucifiedAnd seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughtersAnd five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride,Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.

24Away in the loveable west,

On a pastoral forehead of Wales,I was under a roof here, I was at rest,And they the prey of the gales;She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thicklyFalling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails,Was calling 'O Christ, Christ come quickly':The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worn Best.

25The majesty! what did she mean?Breathe, arch and original Breath.Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been?Breathe, body of lovely Death.They were else-minded then, altogether, the menWoke thee with a we are perishlng in the weather of Gennesareth.Or is it that she cried for the crown then,The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen?

26For how to the heart's cheeringThe down-dogged ground-hugged grey

Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearingOf pied and peeled May!Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,What by your measure is the heaven of desire,The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?

27 No, but it was not these.The jading and jar of the cart,

Time's tasking, it is fathers that asking for easeOf the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart,



Not danger, electrical horror; then further it findsThe appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart:Other, I gather, in measure her mind'sBurden, in wind's burly and beat of endragonèd seas.

28But how shall I … make me room there;Reach me a … Fancy, come faster— Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there,Thing that she … there then! the Master,

Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head:He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her;Do, deal, lord it with living and dead;Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and have donewith his doom there.

29Ah! there was a heart right!There was single eye!Read the unshapeable shock nightAnd knew the who and the why;Wording it how but by him that present and past,Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?— The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blastTarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light.

30Jesu, heart's light,Jesu, maid's son,What was the feast followed the nightThou hadst glory of this nun?Feast of the one woman without stain.For so conceived, so to conceive thee is done;But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain,Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee outright.

31

Well, she has thee for the pain, for thePatience; but pity of the rest of them!Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for theComfortless unconfessed of them—

No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous ProvidenceFinger of a tender of, O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of theMaiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, andStartle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest; doestempest carry the grain for thee?

32

I admire thce, master of the tides,Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;



The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs sides,The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall;Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind;Ground of being, and granite of it: past allGrasp God, throned behind

Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides;

33With a mercy that outridesThe all of water, an ark For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glidesLower than death and the dark;A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison,The-last-breath penitent spirits—the uttermost mark Our passion-plungèd giant risen,The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of

his strides.

34 Now burn, new born to the world,Doubled-naturèd name,The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furledMiracle-in-Mary-of-flame,Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!

Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of firehard-hurled.

35Dame, at our door Drowned, and among our shoals,Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of theReward:Our King back, oh, upon English souls!Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,

be a crimson-cresseted east,

More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls,Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,Our hearts' charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts' chivalry's throng'sLord.

5 Penmaen Pool

For the Visitors' Book at the Inn

WHO long for rest, who look for pleasure

Away from counter, court, or school



O where live well your lease of leisureBut here at, here at Penmaen Pool?

You'll dare the Alp? you'll dart the skiff?— Each sport has here its tackle and tool:

Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff;Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen Pool.

What's yonder?—Grizzled Dyphwys dim:The triple-hummocked Giant's stool,Hoar messmate, hobs and nobs with himTo halve the bowl of Penmaen Pool.

And all the landscape under survey,At tranquil turns, by nature's rule,Rides repeated topsyturvy

In frank, in fairy Penmaen Pool.

And Charles's Wain, the wondrous seven,And sheep-flock clouds like worlds of wool.For all they shine so, high in heaven,Shew brighter shaken in Penmaen Pool.

The Mawddach, how she trips! though throttledIf floodtide teeming thrills her full,And mazy sands all water-wattledWaylay her at ebb, past Penmaen Pool.

But what 's to see in stormy weather,When grey showers gather and gusts are cool?— Why, raindrop-roundels looped together That lace the face of Penmaen Pool.

Then even in weariest wintry hour Of New Year's month or surly YuleFurred snows, charged tuft above tuft, tower From darksome darksome Penmaen Pool.

And ever, if bound here hardest home,You've parlour-pastime left and (who'll

Not honour it?) ale like goldy foamThat frocks an oar in Penmaen Pool.

Then come who pine for peace or pleasureAway from counter, court, or school,Spend here your measure of time and treasureAnd taste the treats of Penmaen Pool.

6 The Silver Jubilee:



To James First Bishop of Shrewsbury on the 25th Year

of his Episcopate July 28. 1876

1THOUGH no high-hung bells or din

Of braggart bugles cry it in— What is sound? Nature's roundMakes the Silver Jubilee.

2Five and twenty years have runSince sacred fountains to the sunSprang, that but now were shut,Showering Silver Jubilee.

3

Feasts, when we shall fall asleep,Shrewsbury may see others keep;

None but you this her true,This her Silver Jubilee.

4 Not today we need lamentYour wealth of life is some way spent:Toil has shed round your headSilver but for Jubilee.

5Then for her whose velvet valesShould have pealed with welcome, Wales,Let the chime of a rhymeUtter Silver Jubilee.

7 God's Grandeur

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared withtoil;And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;And though the last lights off the black West went



Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bentWorld broods with warm breast and with ah!

bright wings.

8 The Starlight Night

LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!— Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, alms,vows.Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellowsallows!These are indeed the barn; withindoors houseThe shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouseChrist home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

9 Spring

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrushThrough the echoing timber does so rinse and wringThe ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brushThe descending blue; that blue is all in a rushWith richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginningIn Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy,Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy thewinning.

10 The Lantern out of Doors

SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,That interests our eyes. And who goes there?



I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty brightIn mould or mind or what not else makes rare:

They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: windWhat most I may eye after, be in at the endI cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amendThere, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, footfóllows kínd,Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

11 The Sea and the Skylark

ON ear and ear two noises too old to endTrench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score

In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town!How ring right out our sordid turbid time,Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:Our make and making break, are breaking, downTo man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.

_12 The Windhover:

To Christ our Lord_

I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal-con, in his ridingOf the rolling level underneath him steady air, andstridingHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wingIn his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:



the hurl and glidingRebuffed the big wind. My heart in hidingStirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of thething!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, hereBuckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billionTimes told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough downsillionShine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

13 Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and

plough;And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise him.

14 Hurrahing in Harvest

SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, thestooks riseAround; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely

behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you aRapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wieldingshoulder Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—



These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet,The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off

under his feet.

15 Caged Skylark

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cageMan's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house,dwells— That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cellsOr wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest— Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed

For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

16 In the Valley of the Elwy

I REMEMBER a house where all were goodTo me, God knows, deserving no such thing:Comforting smell breathed at very entering,Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.That cordial air made those kind people a hoodAll over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing

Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;Only the inmate does not correspond:God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.

_17 The Loss of the Eurydice



Foundered March 24. 1878_

1THE Eurydice—it concerned thee, O Lord:Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,

Some asleep unawakened, all un-warned, eleven fathoms fallen

2Where she foundered! One strokeFelled and furled them, the hearts of oak!And flockbells off the aerialDowns' forefalls beat to the burial.

3For did she pride her, freighted fully, on

Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?— Precious passing measure,Lads and men her lade and treasure.

4She had come from a cruise, training seamen— Men, boldboys soon to be men:Must it, worst weather,Blast bole and bloom together?

5 No Atlantic squall overwrought her Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:Home was hard at handAnd the blow bore from land.

6And you were a liar, O blue March day.Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay;But what black Boreas wrecked her? heCame equipped, deadly-electric,

7A beetling baldbright cloud thorough EnglandRiding: there did storms not mingle? andHailropes hustle and grind their Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?

8 Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom; Now it overvaults Appledurcombe; Now near by Ventnor town

It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.



9Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!Royal, and all her royals wore.Sharp with her, shorten sail!Too late; lost; gone with the gale.

10This was that fell capsize,As half she had righted and hoped to riseDeath teeming in by her portholesRaced down decks, round messes of mortals.

11Then a lurch forward, frigate and men;'All hands for themselves' the cry ran then;But she who had housed them thither

Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.

12Marcus Hare, high her captain,Kept to her—care-drowned and wrapped inCheer's death, would followHis charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.

13All under Channel to bury in a beach her Cheeks: Right, rude of feature,He thought he heard say'Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.'

14It is even seen, time's something server,In mankind's medley a duty-swerver,At downright 'No or yes?'Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.

15

Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,(Low lie his mates now on watery bed)Takes to the seas and snowsAs sheer down the ship goes.

16 Now her afterdraught gullies him too down; Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;Till a lifebelt and God's willLend him a lift from the sea-swill.

17 Now he shoots short up to the round air;



Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;But his eye no cliff, no coast or Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.

18

Him, after an hour of wintry waves,A schooner sights, with another, and saves,And he boards her in Oh! such joyHe has lost count what came next, poor boy.—

19They say who saw one sea-corpse coldHe was all of lovely manly mould,Every inch a tar,Of the best we boast our sailors are.

20Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! heIs strung by duty, is strained to beauty,And brown-as-dawning-skinnedWith brine and shine and whirling wind.

21O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!Leagues, leagues of seamanshipSlumber in these forsakenBones, this sinew, and will not waken.

22He was but one like thousands more,Day and night I deploreMy people and born own nation,Fast foundering own generation,

23I might let bygones be—our curseOf ruinous shrine no hand or, worse,

Robbery's hand is busy toDress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;

24Only the breathing temple and fleetLife, this wildworth blown so sweet,These daredeaths, ay this crew, inUnchrist, all rolled in ruin—

25Deeply surely I need to deplore it,

Wondering why my master bore it,



The riving off that raceSo at home, time was, to his truth and grace

26That a starlight-wender of ours would say

The marvellous Milk was Walsingham WayAnd one—but let be, let be:More, more than was will yet be.—

27O well wept, mother have lost son;Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one:Though grief yield them no goodYet shed what tears sad truelove should.

28

But to Christ lord of thunder Crouch; lay knee by earth low under:'Holiest, loveliest, bravest,Save my hero, O Hero savest.

29And the prayer thou hearst me makingHave, at the awful overtaking,Heard; have heard and grantedGrace that day grace was wanted.'

30 Not that hell knows redeeming,But for souls sunk in seemingFresh, till doomfire burn all,Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.

18 The May Magnificat

MAY is Mary's month, and IMuse at that and wonder why:Her feasts follow reason,Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day;But the Lady Month, May,Why fasten that upon her,With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter Than the most are must delight her?

Is it opportunestAnd flowers finds soonest?



Ask of her, the mighty mother:Her reply puts this other Question: What is Spring?— Growth in every thing—

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,Grass and green world all together;Star-eyed strawberry-breastedThrostle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thinForms and warms the life within;And bird and blossom swellIn sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing

Mary sees, sympathisingWith that world of good,

Nature's motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kindWith delight calls to mindHow she did in her storedMagnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this:Spring's universal blissMuch, had much to sayTo offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dappleBloom lights the orchard-appleAnd thicket and thorp are merryWith silver-surfèd cherry

And azuring-over greybell makesWood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

And magic cuckoocallCaps, clears, and clinches all—

This ecstacy all through mothering earthTells Mary her mirth till Christ's birthTo remember and exultationIn God who was her salvation.

_19 Binsey Poplars

felled 1879_



MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,All felled, felled, are all felled;Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalledShadow that swam or sank On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding

bank.

O if we but knew what we doWhen we delve or hew— Hack and rack the growing green!Since country is so tender To touch, her being só slender,That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,Where we, even where we meanTo mend her we end her,When we hew or delve:After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.Ten or twelve, only ten or twelveStrokes of havoc únselveThe sweet especial scene,Rural scene, a rural scene,Sweet especial rural scene.

20 Duns Scotus's Oxford

TOWERY city and branchy between towers;Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country andtown didOnce encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, soursThat neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is groundedBest in; graceless growth, thou hast confoundedRural rural keeping—folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I releaseHe lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are whatHe haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a notRivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;

Who fired France for Mary without spot.



21 Henry Purcell

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other

musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in

notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.

HAVE fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversalOf the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy,here.

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsalOf own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs

the ear.

Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me!only I'llHave an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, tohis pelted plumage under Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walkedhis while

The thunder-purple seabeach plumè purple-of-thunder,If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter acolossal smileOff him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits withwonder.

22 Peace

WHEN will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?When, when, Peacè, will you, Peace? I'll not playhypocriteTo own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; butThat piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peaceallowsAlarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieuSome good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace heredoes houseHe comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,

He comes to brood and sit.



_23 The Bugler's First Communion

A BUGLER boy from barrack (it is over the hillThere)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of IrishMother to an English sire (he

Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),

This very very day came down to us after a boon he onMy late being there begged of me, overflowingBoon in my bestowing,Came, I say, this day to it—to a First Communion.

Here he knelt then ín regimental red.Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feetTo his youngster take his treat!Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead.

There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine,By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ's darling,dauntless;Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless;Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine.

Frowning and forefending angel-warder Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;March, kind comrade, abreast him;Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.

How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill,When limber liquid youth, that to all I teachYields tender as a pushed peach,Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will!

Then though I should tread tufts of consolationDáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve toAnd do serve God to serve toJust such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration.

Nothing élse is like it, no, not all so strainsUs: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portendingThat sweet's sweeter ending;Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns.

O now well work that sealing sacred ointment!O for now charms, arms, what bans off badAnd locks love ever in a lad!Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment

Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift.In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing



That brow and bead of being,An our day's God's own Galahad. Though this child'sdrift

Seems by a divíne doom chánnelled, nor do I cry

Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roamIn backwheels though bound home?— That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by;

Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleasWould brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, didPrayer go disregarded:Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heavenheard these.

24 Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice

THE dappled die-awayCheek and wimpled lip,The gold-wisp, the airy-greyEye, all in fellowship— This, all this beauty blooming,This, all this freshness fuming,Give God while worth consuming.

Both thought and thew now bolder

And told by Nature: Tower;Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder That beat and breathe in power— This pride of prime's enjoymentTake as for tool, not toy meantAnd hold at Christ's employment.

The vault and scope and schoolingAnd mastery in the mind,In silk-ash kept from cooling,And ripest under rind— What life half lifts the latch of,What hell stalks towards the snatch of,Your offering, with despatch, of!

25 Andromeda

Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,With not her either beauty's equal or Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.

Time past she has been attempted and pursuedBy many blows and banes; but now hears roar



A wilder beast from West than all were, moreRife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes?— Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs

His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,All while her patience, morselled into pangs,Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

26 The Candle Indoors

SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,

Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.By that window what task what fingers ply,I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fireMend first and vital candle in close heart's vault:You there are master, do your own desire;What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a faultIn a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar

And cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

_27 The Handsome Heart:

at a Gracious Answer_

'BUT tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buyYou?'—'Father, what you buy me I like best.'With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,He swung to his first poised purport of reply.

What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly— Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest— To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed,Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.

Mannerly-hearted! more than handsome face— Beauty's bearing or muse of mounting vein,All, in this case, bathed in high hallowing grace . . .

Of heaven what boon to buy you, boy, or gain Not granted?—Only … O on that path you paceRun all your race, O brace sterner that strain!



_28

At the Wedding March_

GOD with honour hang your head,

Groom, and grace you, bride, your bedWith lissome scions, sweet scions,Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other's comfort kind:Déep, déeper than divined,Divine charity, dear charity,Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears:I to him turn with tears

Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,Déals tríumph and immortal years.

29 Felix Randal

FELIX RANDAL the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsomePining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and someFatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mendedBeing anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began someMonths earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransomTendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever heoffended!

This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and batteringsandal!

30 Brothers

How lovely the elder brother'sLife all laced in the other's,Lóve-laced! what once I wellWitnessed; so fortune fell.When Shrovetide, two years gone, 5



Our boys' plays brought onPart was picked for John,Young Jóhn: then fear, then joyRan revel in the elder boy.Their night was come now; all 10

Our company thronged the hall;Henry, by the wall,Beckoned me beside him:I came where called, and eyed himBy meanwhiles; making mý play 15Turn most on tender byplay.For, wrung all on love's rack,My lad, and lost in Jack,Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip;Or drove, with a diver's dip, 20Clutched hands down through clasped knees—

Truth's tokens tricks like these,Old telltales, with what stressHe hung on the imp's success.

Now the other was bráss-bóld: 25Hé had no work to holdHis heart up at the strain;

Nay, roguish ran the vein.Two tedious acts were past;Jack's call and cue at last; 30When Henry, heart-forsook,Dropped eyes and dared not look.Eh, how áll rúng!Young dog, he did give tongue!But Harry—in his hands he has flung 35His tear-tricked cheeks of flameFor fond love and for shame.Ah Nature, framed in fault,There 's comfort then, there 's salt;

Nature, bad, base, and blind, 40Dearly thou canst be kind;There dearly thén, deárly,

I'll cry thou canst be kind.

_31 Spring and Fall:

to a young child_

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríevingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leáves, like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Áh! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder



By and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It is the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.

32 Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves

EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, | vaulty, voluminous, . . stupendous Evening strainsto be tíme's vást, | womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night. Her fond yellow hornlightwound to the west, | her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height Waste; her earliest stars,

earl-stars, | stárs principal, overbend us, Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth | her being hasunbound, her dapple is at an end, as-tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | self ín self steepèd and pashed—qúite Disremembering, dísmembering | àll now. Heart, you round meright With: Óur évening is over us; óur night | whélms, whélms, ánd will end us. Only the

beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black, Ever so black onit. Óur tale, óur oracle! | Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind Off hér once skéined stained véinedvaríety | upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds—black,white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bútthese | twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- andshelterless, | thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.

33 Inversnaid

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,His rollrock highroad roaring down,In coop and in comb the fleece of his foamFlutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróthTurns and twindles over the brothOf a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dewAre the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereftOf wet and of wildness? Let them be left,O let them be left, wildness and wet;Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.



_34

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;As tumbled over rim in roundy wellsStones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;Kéeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is— Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

35 Ribblesdale

EARTH, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavès throngAnd louchèd low grass, heaven that dost appealTo, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;That canst but only be, but dost that long—

Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong

Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reelThy river, and o'er gives all to rack or wrong.

And what is Earth's eye, tongue, or heart else, whereElse, but in dear and dogged man?—Ah, the heir To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn,To thriftless reave both our rich round world bareAnd none reck of world after, this bids wear Earth brows of such care, care and dear concern.

_36 The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo

(Maidens' song from St. Winefred's Well)_

THE LEADEN ECHO

How to keep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhereknown some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latchor catch or key to keepBack beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing

away?



Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, stillmessengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?

No there's none, there's none, O no there's none, Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,

Do what you may do, what, do what you may,And wisdom is early to despair:Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be doneTo keep at bayAge and age's evils, hoar hair,Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, windingsheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;So be beginning, be beginning to despair.O there's none; no no no there's none:Be beginning to despair, to despair,Despair, despair, despair, despair.

THE GOLDEN ECHO

Spare!There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);Only not within seeing of the sun,

Not within the singeing of the strong sun,Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air.Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,Óne. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,

Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that'sfresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us andswiftly away with, done away with, undone,Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly anddangerously sweetOf us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,

Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truthTo its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-lastingness of, O it is an all youth!Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,gallantry and gaiety and grace,Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant,girlgrace— Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion themwith breath,And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long beforedeathGive beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's

self and beauty's giver.See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair



Is, hair of the head, numbered. Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mouldWill have waked and have waxed and have walked with the windwhat while we slept,This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold

What while we, while we slumbered.O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we sohaggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged,so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, keptFar with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.— Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.— Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,Yonder.

37

The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we

Breathe

WILD air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere,That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixtThe fleeciest, frailest-flixed

Snowflake; that's fairly mixedWith, riddles, and is rifeIn every least thing's life;This needful, never spent,And nursing element; 10My more than meat and drink,My meal at every wink;This air, which, by life's law,My lung must draw and draw

Now but to breathe its praise,Minds me in many waysOf her who not onlyGave God's infinityDwindled to infancyWelcome in womb and breast, 20Birth, milk, and all the restBut mothers each new graceThat does now reach our race— Mary Immaculate,Merely a woman, yetWhose presence, power is

Great as no goddess'sWas deemèd, dreamèd; who



This one work has to do— Let all God's glory through, 30God's glory which would goThrough her and from her flowOff, and no way but so.

I say that we are woundWith mercy round and roundAs if with air: the sameIs Mary, more by name.She, wild web, wondrous robe,Mantles the guilty globe,Since God has let dispense 40Her prayers his providence:

Nay, more than almoner,The sweet alms' self is her

And men are meant to shareHer life as life does air.If I have understood,She holds high motherhoodTowards all our ghostly goodAnd plays in grace her partAbout man's beating heart, 50Laying, like air's fine flood,The deathdance in his blood;Yet no part but what willBe Christ our Saviour still.Of her flesh he took flesh:He does take fresh and fresh,Though much the mystery how,

Not flesh but spirit nowAnd makes, O marvellous!

New Nazareths in us, 60Where she shall yet conceiveHim, morning, noon, and eve;

New Bethlems, and he bornThere, evening, noon, and morn

Bethlem or Nazareth,Men here may draw like breathMore Christ and baffle death;Who, born so, comes to be

New self and nobler meIn each one and each one 70More makes, when all is done,Both God's and Mary's Son.Again, look overheadHow air is azurèd;O how! nay do but stand

Where you can lift your handSkywards: rich, rich it laps



Round the four fingergaps.Yet such a sapphire-shot,Charged, steepèd sky will not 80Stain light. Yea, mark you this:It does no prejudice.

The glass-blue days are thoseWhen every colour glows,Each shape and shadow shows.Blue be it: this blue heavenThe seven or seven times sevenHued sunbeam will transmitPerfect, not alter it.Or if there does some soft, 90On things aloof, aloft,Bloom breathe, that one breath moreEarth is the fairer for.

Whereas did air not makeThis bath of blue and slakeHis fire, the sun would shake,A blear and blinding ballWith blackness bound, and allThe thick stars round him rollFlashing like flecks of coal, 100Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,In grimy vasty vault.So God was god of old:A mother came to mouldThose limbs like ours which areWhat must make our daystar Much dearer to mankind;Whose glory bare would blindOr less would win man's mind.Through her we may see him 110Made sweeter, not made dim,And her hand leaves his lightSifted to suit our sight.Be thou then, thou dear

Mother, my atmosphere;My happier world, whereinTo wend and meet no sin;Above me, round me lieFronting my froward eyeWith sweet and scarless sky; 120Stir in my ears, speak thereOf God's love, O live air,Of patience, penance, prayer:World-mothering air, air wild,Wound with thee, in thee isled,

Fold home, fast fold thy child.



38 To what serves Mortal Beauty?

To what serves mortal beauty | dangerous; does set danc-ing blood the O-seal-that-so | feature, flung prouder formThan Purcell tune lets tread to? | See: it does this: keeps warm

Men's wits to the things that are; | what good means—where a glanceMaster more may than gaze, | gaze out of countenance.Those lovely lads once, wet-fresh | windfalls of war's storm,How then should Gregory, a father, | have gleanèd else from swarm-ed Rome? But God to a nation | dealt that day's dear chance.To man, that needs would worship | block or barren stone,Our law says: Love what are | love's worthiest, were all known;World's loveliest—men's selves. Self | flashes off frame and face.What do then? how meet beauty? | Merely meet it; own,Home at heart, heaven's sweet gift; | then leave, let that alone.Yea, wish that though, wish all, | God's better beauty, grace.

39 (The Soldier)

YES. Whý do we áll, seeing of a soldier, bless him? blessOur redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,But frail clay, nay but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guessThat, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less;It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,

And scarlet wear the spirit of wár thére express.

Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldieringthrough;He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss

Now, and séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,And cry 'O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:Were I come o'er again' cries Christ 'it should be this'.

40 (Carrion Comfort)

NOT, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of manIn me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on meThy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb againstme? scanWith darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic toavoid thee and flee?



Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil,since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, wouldlaugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me?or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now donedarkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

41

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing— Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-

ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.

_42 Tom's Garland;

upon the Unemployed_

TOM—garlanded with squat and surly steelTom; then Tom's fallowbootfellow piles pick By him and rips out rockfire homeforth—sturdy Dick;Tom Heart-at-ease, Tom Navvy: he is all for his mealSure, 's bed now. Low be it: lustily he his low lot (feelThat ne'er need hunger, Tom; Tom seldom sick,Seldomer heartsore; that treads through, prickproof,thick

Thousands of thorns, thoughts) swings though. Common-wealLittle I reck ho! lacklevel in, if all had bread:What! Country is honour enough in all us—lordly head,With heaven's lights high hung round, or, mother-groundThat mammocks, mighty foot. But no way sped,

Nor mind nor mainstrength; gold go garlandedWith, perilous, O nó; nor yet plod safe shod sound;Undenizened, beyond boundOf earth's glory, earth's ease, all; no one, nowhere,In wide the world's weal; rare gold, bold steel, bareIn both; care, but share care—



This, by Despair, bred Hangdog dull; by Rage,Manwolf, worse; and their packs infest the age.

43 Harry Ploughman

HARD as hurdle arms, with a broth of goldish flueBreathed round; the rack of ribs; the scooped flank; lank Rope-over thigh; knee-nave; and barrelled shank— Head and foot, shoulder and shank— By a grey eye's heed steered well, one crew, fall to;Stand at stress. Each limb's barrowy brawn, his thewThat onewhere curded, onewhere sucked or sank— Soared or sank—,Though as a beechbole firm, finds his, as at a roll-call, rank

And features, in flesh, what deed he each must do— His sinew-service where do.

He leans to it, Harry bends, look. Back, elbow, andliquid waistIn him, all quail to the wallowing o' the plough:'s cheek crimsons; curlsWag or crossbridle, in a wind lifted, windlaced— See his wind- lilylocks -laced;Churlsgrace, too, child of Amansstrength, how it hangsor hurls

Them—broad in bluff hide his frowning feet lashed! racedWith, along them, cragiron under and cold furls— With-a-fountain's shining-shot furls.

44

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my lifeAmong strangèrs. Father and mother dear,Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.

England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wifeTo my creating thought, would neither hear Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírdRemove. Not but in all removes I canKind love both give and get. Only what wordWisest my heart breeds dark heaven's baffling banBars or hell's spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.



45

I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.What hours, O what black hoürs we have spentThis night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light's delay.With witness I speak this. But where I sayHours I mean years, mean life. And my lamentIs cries countless, cries like dead letters sentTo dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decreeBitter would have me taste: my taste was me;Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I seeThe lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

46

PATIENCE, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asksWants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;To do without, take tosses, and obey.Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,

Nowhere. Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks

Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basksPurple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it killsTo bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious willsOf us we do bid God bend to him even so.And where is he who more and more distilsDelicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fillsHis crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

47

MY own heart let me have more pity on; letMe live to my sad self hereafter kind,Charitable; not live this tormented mindWith this tormented mind tormenting yet.I cast for comfort I can no more getBy groping round my comfortless, than blindEyes in their dark can day or thirst can findThirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do adviseYou, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile



Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy sizeAt God knows when to God knows what; whose smile's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skiesBetweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

48 That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, thenchevy on an air-

built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng;they glitter in marches.Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elmarches,Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats

earth bareOf yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parchesSquandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches,starchesSquadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil thereFootfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shoneSheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark

Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resur-rection,A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.Across my foundering deck shoneA beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trashFall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:In a flash, at a trumpet crash,I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, andThis Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortaldiamond,Is immortal diamond.

49

In honour of

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shieldShould tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.On Christ they do and on the martyr may;



But be the war within, the brand we wieldUnseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,

Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)Could crowd career with conquest while there wentThose years and years by of world without eventThat in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

50

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verum-tamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via

impiorum prospera-tur? &c.

THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contendWith thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why mustDisappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dostDefeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lustDo in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are againWith fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakesThem; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

51 To R. B.

THE fine delight that fathers thought; the strongSpur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,

Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.

Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she longWithin her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim

Now known and hand at work now never wrong.Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;I want the one rapture of an inspiration.O then if in my lagging lines you missThe roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss

Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.



UNFINISHED POEMS& FRAGMENTS

52 Summa

THE best ideal is the trueAnd other truth is none.All glory be ascribèd toThe holy Three in One.

53

WHAT being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath beenThat hére pérsonal tells off these heart-song powerful

peals?— A bush-browed, beetle-brówed bíllow is it?With a soúth-wésterly wínd blústering, with a tide rollsreelsOf crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seasin; seenÚnderneath, their glassy barrel, of a fairy green.. . . . . . . .Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling

_54On the Portrait of Two BeautifulYoung People

A Brother and Sister_

O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grievesDiscovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.

Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast: Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blestIn one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast,Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.

And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beamsTheir young delightful hour do feature downThat fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreamsOr ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.



She leans on him with such contentment fondAs well the sister sits, would well the wife;His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond,Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.

But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you areOf favoured make and mind and health and youth,Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star?There's none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.

There's none but good can bé good, both for youAnd what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid;

None good but God—a warning wavèd toOne once that was found wanting when Good weighed.

Man lives that list, that leaning in the will

No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.

Your feast of; that most in you earnest eyeMay but call on your banes to more carouse.Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry,To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward

boughs?

Enough: corruption was the world's first woe.What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?O but I bear my burning witness thoughAgainst the wild and wanton work of men.. . . . . . .

55

THE sea took pity: it interposed with doom:'I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand:Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb,And she shall child them on the New-world strand.'. . . . . . . .

56 (Ash-boughs)

a.

NOT of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deepPoetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day andfurled



Fast ór they in clammyish lashtender combs creepApart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweepThe smouldering enormous winter welkin! MayMells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray

Of greenery: it is old earth's groping towards the steepHeaven whom she childs us by.

(Variant from line 7.) b.

They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, therehurled],With talons sweepThe smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye,But more cheer is when] MayMells blue with snowwhite through their fringe and fray

Of greenery and old earth gropes for, grasps at steepHeaven with it whom she childs things by.

57

. . . . . . . .HOPE holds to Christ the mind's own mirror outTo take His lovely likeness more and more.It will not well, so she would bring aboutAn ever brighter burnish than before

And turns to wash it from her welling eyesAnd breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.Her glass is blest but she as good as blindHolds till hand aches and wonders what is there;Her glass drinks light, she darkles down behind,All of her glorious gainings unaware.. . . . . . . .I told you that she turned her mirror dimBetweenwhiles, but she sees herself not Him.. . . . . . . .

_53 St. Winefred's Well

ACT I. Sc. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me?

W. You came by Caerwys, sir?

T. I came by Caerwys.



W. ThereSome messenger there might have met you from my uncle.

T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this themessage:

Lord Beuno comes to-night.

W. To-night, sir!

T. Soon, now: thereforeHave all things ready in his room.

W. There needs but little doing.

T. Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one companion,

His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be,But both will share one cell. This was good news,Gwenvrewi.

W. Ah yes!

T. Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her. Exit Winefred.

No man has such a daughter. The fathers of the worldCall no such maiden 'mine'. The deeper grows her dearnessAnd more and more times laces round and round my heart,The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingersthere,Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strainsthem, strains them;Meantime some tongue cries 'What, Teryth! what, thou

poor fond father!How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air so rich about thee,Is all, all sheared away, thus!' Then I sweat for fear.

Or else a funeral, and yet 'tis not a funeral,Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot withfeeling thatAlive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlesslyGoes marching thro' my mind. What sense is this? Ithas none.This is too much the father; nay the mother. Fanciful!I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.

Enter Gwenlo.

. . . . . . . . . . .



Act II.— Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene, Winefred having been

murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc with a bloody sword.

C. My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, mymind?

What stroke has Caradoc's right arm dealt? what done?Head of a rebelStruck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her— Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.What work? what harm 's done? There is no harm done,none yet;Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;To makebelieve my mood was—mock. I might think so

But here, here is a workman from his day's task sweats.Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thydark lair; these drops

Never, never, never in their blue banks again.The woeful, Cradock, the woeful word! Then what,What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders,fall,And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank's edge; thenDown the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.Her eyes, oh and her eyes!In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,

No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast downBut, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven:

O there,There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeancesAre afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and whatfirst lightningAny instant falls means me. And I do not repent;I do not and I will not repent, not repent.The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violentI have like a lion done, lionlike done,Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.

Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth

In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor



Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwaveringWho, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home,nature's business,

Despatches with no flinching. But will flesh, O can fleshSecond this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must wearyAnd in this darksome world what comfort can I find?Down this darksome world cómfort whére can I findWhen 'ts light I quenched; its rose, time's one rich rose,my hand,By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleecèd bloom,Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter witheringWith no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her mostThat might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,

To hunger and not have, yét hope ón for, to storm andstrive andBe at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper dis-appointed,The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,

Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,Life's quick, this kínd, this kéen self-feeling,With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,Must all day long taste murder. What do nów then?Do? Nay,Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here crampsall doing. What do? Not yield,

Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out,Brave all, and take what comes—as here this rabble is come,Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hersThan sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes.Come!

Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno.

. . . . . . . . . . .

After Winefred's raising from the dead and the breaking out of the fountain.

BEUNO. O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet fromfountains,While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing.

While blind men's eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughtsof daylight,



Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that's lost upon them,While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-dance,Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,

Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief, in burden,As long as men are mortal and God merciful,So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moistand musicalWith the uproll and the downcarol of day and nightdeliveringWater, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).

Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, every-where,Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.. . . . . . . . . . .What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, oncrutchesTheir crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome cámehither!

Not now to náme evenThose dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.. . . . . . . . . . .As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primrosesShall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,Amongst come-back-again things, thíngs with a revival,things with a recovery,Thy name . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

59

WHAT shall I do for the land that bred me,Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?— Be under her banner and live for her honour:Under her banner I'll live for her honour.CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.

Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,

But country and flag, the flag I am under— There is the shilling that finds me willing



To follow a banner and fight for honour.CH. We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.

Call me England's fame's fond lover,Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.

Spend me or end me what God shall send me,But under her banner I live for her honour.CH. Under her banner we march for her honour.

Where is the field I must play the man on?O welcome there their steel or cannon.Immortal beauty is death with duty,If under her banner I fall for her honour.CH. Under her banner we fall for her honour.

60

THE times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;The times are winter, watch, a world undone:They waste, they wither worse; they as they runOr bring more or more blazon man's distress.And I not help. Nor word now of success:All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one— Work which to see scarce so much as begunMakes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.

Or what is else? There is your world within.There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.Your will is law in that small commonweal . . .

61 Cheery Beggar

BEYOND Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place calledthere the Plain,In Summer, in a burst of summertimeFollowing falls and falls of rain,

When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;. . . . . . . .

The motion of that man's heart is fineWhom want could not make píne, píneThat struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer himLike that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.. . . . . . . .

62



DENIS, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting witCaps occasion with an intellectual fit.Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber'll hitThe bald and bóld blínking gold when áll's dóneRight rooting in the bare butt's wincing navel in the sight

of the sun.. . . . . . . .

63

THE furl of fresh-leaved dogrose downHis cheeks the forth-and-flaunting sunHad swarthed about with lion-brownBefore the Spring was done.

His locks like all a ravel-rope's-end,With hempen strands in spray— Fallow, foam-fallow, hanks—fall'n off their ranks,Swung down at a disarray.

Or like a juicy and jostling shock Of bluebells sheaved in MayOr wind-long fleeces on the flock A day off shearing day.

Then over his turnèd temples—here—

Was a rose, or, failing that,Rough-Robin or five-lipped campion clear For a beauty-bow to his hat,And the sunlight sidled, like dewdrops, like dandleddiamondsThrough the sieve of the straw of the plait.. . . . . . . .

_64

The Woodlark_

TEEVO cheetio cheevio chee:O where, what can thát be?Weedio-weedio: there again! So tinya trickle of sóng-strain; And all round not to be found For brier, bough, furrow, or gréenground Before or behind or far or at hand Either left either right Anywhere in the súnlight.Well, after all! Ah but hark—'I am the little woodlark. . . . . . . . To-day the sky is two and twoWith white strokes and strains of the blue . . . . . . . Round a ring, around a ring And while Isail (must listen) I sing . . . . . . . The skylark is my cousin and he Is known to men more thanme . . . . . . . . . . when the cry within Says Go on then I go on Till the longing is less and thegood gone

But down drop, if it says Stop,To the all-a-leaf of the tréetop



And after that off the bough. . . . . . .I ám so véry, O só very gladThat I dó thínk there is not to be had . . .. . . . . . .

The blue wheat-acre is underneathAnd the braided ear breaks out of the sheath,The ear in milk, lush the sash,And crush-silk poppies aflash,The blood-gush blade-gashFlame-rash rudredBud shelling or broad-shedTatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangledDandy-hung dainty head.. . . . . . .And down … the furrow dry

Sunspurge and oxeyeAnd laced-leaved lovelyFoam-tuft fumitory. . . . . . .Through the velvety wind V-wingedTo the nest's nook I balance and buoyWith a sweet joy of a sweet joy,Sweet, of a sweet, of a sweet joyOf a sweet—a sweet—sweet—joy.'

65 Moonrise

I AWOKE in the Midsummer not to call night, |in thewhite and the walk of the morning:The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe | of afinger-nail held to the candle,Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit, | lovely in waning butlustreless,Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, | of dark Maenefa the mountain;A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, | en-tangled him, not quit utterly.This was the prized, the desirable sight, | unsought, pre-sented so easily,Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, | eyelid and eyelid of slumber.

66

REPEAT that, repeat,Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delight-fully sweet,With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound



Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground,hollow hollow hollow ground:The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.

67 On a piece of music

How all's to one thing wrought!

See facsimile, after p. 92.

(Transcriber's note: The facsimile of the handwritten poem is omitted from this text version. Itis freely available online from the Internet Archive.)

68

'The child is father to the man.'How can he be? The words are wild.Suck any sense from that who can:'The child is father to the man.'

No; what the poet did write ran,'The man is father to the child.''The child is father to the man!'How can he be? The words are wild.

69

THE shepherd's brow fronting forked lightning, ownsThe horror and the havoc and the gloryOf it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a storyOf just, majestical, and giant groans.But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones;Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoaryAge gasp; whose breath is our memento mori — What bass is our viol for tragic tones?He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;

And, blazoned in however bold the name,Man Jack the man is, just; his mate a hussy.And I that die these deaths, that feed this flame,That … in smooth spoons spy life's masque mirrored:tameMy tempests there, my fire and fever fussy.

70 To his Watch

MORTAL my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart

Warm beat with cold beat company, shall IEarlier or you fail at our force, and lie



The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?The telling time our task is; time's some part,

Not all, but we were framed to fail and die— One spell and well that one. There, ah therebyIs comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.

Field-flown the departed day no morning bringsSaying 'This was yours' with her, but new one, worse.And then that last and shortest . . .

71

STRIKE, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hailMay's beauty massacre and wispèd wild clouds growOut on the giant air; tell Summer No,

Bid joy back, have at the harvest, keep Hope pale.

72 Epithalamion

HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believeWe are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hoodOf some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, wherea gluegold-brown

Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, betweenRoots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and water- blowballs, down.We are there, when we hear a shoutThat the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover Makes dither, makes hover And the riot of a routOf, it must be, boys from the townBathing: it is summer's sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise

He drops towards the river: unseenSees the bevy of them, how the boysWith dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies hud-dling out,Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all byturn and turn about.

This garland of their gambols flashes in his breastInto such a sudden zestOf summertime joysThat he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the bestThere; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild



wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstoodBy. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angelsthere,Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots

Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with— down he dingsHis bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:Careless these in coloured wispAll lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locksForward falling, forehead frowning, lips crispOver finger-teasing task, his twiny bootsFast he opens, last he offwringsTill walk the world he can with bare his feetAnd come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocksBuilt of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks

And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassyquicksilvery shivès and shootsAnd with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he willthe fleetFlinty kindcold element let break across his limbsLong. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks abouthim, laughs, swims.

Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean I should be wronging longer leaving it tofloat Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note—What is … the delightful dene?Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Father, mother, brothers,sisters, friends Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns Rankèd round the bower . . . . . . . . . .

EDITOR'S NOTES

PREFACE TO NOTES

AN editor of posthumous work is bounden to give some account of the authority for his text;

and it is the purpose of the follow-ing notes to satisfy inquiry concerning matters whereof the present editor has the advantage of first-hand or particular knowledge.

Sources The sources are four, and will be distinguished as A, B, D, and H, as here described.

A is my own collection, a MS. book made up of Autographs—by which word I denote poemsin the author's hand-Writing—pasted into it as they were received from him, and also of contemporary copies of other poems. These autographs and copies date from '67 to '89, theyear of his death. Additions made by copying after that date are not reckoned or used. Thefirst two items of the facsimiles at page 70 are cuttings from A.

B is a MS. book, into which, in '83, I copied from A certain poems of which the author hadkept no copy. He was remiss in making fair copies of his work, and his autograph of The



Deutsch-land having been (seemingly) lost, I copied that poem and others from A at hisrequest. After that date he entered more poems in this book as he completed them, and he alsomade both corrections of copy and emendations of the poems which had been copied into it

by me. Thus, if a poem occur in both A and B, then B is the later and, except for overlookederrors of copyist, the better authority. The last entry written by G. M. H. into this book is of

the date 1887.

D is a collection of the author's letters to Canon Dixon, the only other friend who ever readhis poems, with but few exceptions whether of persons or of poems. These letters are in mykeep-ing; they contain autographs of a few poems with late corrections.

H is the bundle of posthumous papers that came into my hands at the author's death. Thesewere at the time examined, sorted, and indexed; and the more important pieces of whichcopies were taken were inserted into a scrap-book. That col-lection is the source of a series of his most mature sonnets, and of almost all the unfinished poems and fragments. Among these

papers were also some early drafts. The facsimile after p. 92 is from H .

Method The latest autographs and autographic corrections have Been preferred. In the veryfew instances in which this principle was overruled, as in Nos. 1 and 27 , the justi-fication will

be found in the note to the poem. The finished poems from 1 to 51 are ranged chronologically by the years, but in the section 52-74 a fanciful grouping of the fragments was preferred to theinevitable misrepresentations of conjectural dating. G. M. H. dated his poems from their inception, and however much he revised a poem he would date his recast as his first draft.Thus Handsome Heart was written and sent to me in '79; and the recast, which I reject, wasnot made before '83, while the final corrections may be some years later; and yet his lastautograph is dated as the first 'Oxford '79'.

Selection This edition purports to convey all the author's serious Mature poems; and he would probably not have wished any of his earlier poems nor so many or his fragments to have beenincluded. Of the former class three specimens only are admitted—and these, which may beconsidered of exceptional merit or interest, had already been given to the public—but of thelatter almost everything; because these scraps being of mature date, generally contain somespecial beauty of thought or diction, and are invariably of metrical or rhythmical interest:some of them are in this respect as remarkable as anything in the volume. As for exclusion, notranslations of any kind are published here, whether into Greek or Latin from the English of which there are autographs and copies in A or the Englishing of Latin hymns occurring in H :these last are not in my opinion of special merit; and with them I class a few religious pieces

which will be noticed later.

Author's Prosody Of the peculiar scheme of prosody invented and developed by the author afull account is out of the question. His own preface together with his description of themetrical scheme of each poem—which is always, wherever it exists, transcribed in the notes

—may be a sufficient guide for practical purposes. Moreover, the intention of the rhythm, in places where it might seem doubtful, has been indicated by accents printed over thedetermining syllables: in the later poems these accents correspond generally with the author'sown marks: in the earlier poems they do not, but are trustworthy translations.

Marks It was at one time the author's practice to use a very elaborate system of marks, all

indicating the speech-movement: the autograph (in A) of Harry Ploughman carries sevendifferent marks, each one defined at the foot. When reading through his letters for the purpose



of determining dates, I noted a few sentences on this subject which will justify the methodthat I have followed in the text. In 1883 he wrote: 'You were right to leave out the marks: theywere not consistent for one thing, and are always offensive. Stilt there must be some. Either Imust invent a notation applied throughout as in music or else I must only mark where thereader is likely to mistake, and for the present this is what I shall do.' And again in '85: 'This is

my difficulty, what marks to use and when to use them: they are so much needed and yet soobjectionable. ( Punctuation) About punctuation my mind is clear: I can give a rule for everything I write myself, and even for other people, though they might not agree with me

perhaps.' In this last matter the autographs are rigidly respected, the rare intentional aberration being scrupulously noted. And so I have respected his indentation of the verse; but in thesonnets, while my indentation corresponds, as a rule, with some autograph, I have felt free toconsider conveniences, following, however, his growing practice to eschew it altogether.

Apart from questions of taste—and if these poems were to be arraigned for errors of whatmay be called taste, they might be convicted of occasional affectation in metaphor, as wherethe hills are 'as a stallion stal-wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human

feeling, as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary side ', or 'the HolyGhost with warm breast and with ah! bright wings', these and a few such examples are mostlyefforts to force emotion into theological or sectarian channels, as in 'the com-fortlessunconfessed' and the unpoetic line 'His mystery must be instressed stressed', or, again, theexaggerated Marianism of some pieces, or the naked encounter of sensualism and asceticismwhich hurts the 'Golden Echo'.—

Style Apart, I say, from such faults of taste, which few as they numerically are yet affect myliking and more repel my sympathy than do all the rude shocks of his purely artisticwantonness—apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader must havecourage to face, and must in some measure condone before he can discover the great beauties.For these blemishes in the poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him evena hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum and are grown to be intolerant of its absence. And it is well to be clear that there is no pretence to reverse the condemnation of those faults, for which the poet has duly suffered. The extravagances are and will remain whatthey were. Nor can credit be gained from pointing them out: yet, to put readers at their ease, Iwill here define them: they may be called Oddity and Obscurity; (Oddity) and since the firstmay provoke laughter when a writer serious (and this poet is always serious), while the latter must prevent him from being understood (and this poet has always something to say), it may

be assumed that they were not a part of his intention. Something of what he thought on thissubject may be seen in the following extracts from his letters. In Feb. 1879, he wrote: 'All

therefore that I think of doing is to keep my verses together in one place—at present I havenot even correct copies—, that, if anyone should like, they might be published after my death.And that again is unlikely, as well as remote. . . . No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic style. But as air, melody, iswhat strikes me most of all in music and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am inthe habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is the virtue of design,

pattern, or inscape to be distinctive and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. Thisvice I cannot have escaped.' And again two months later: 'Moreover the oddness may makethem repulsive at first and yet Lang might have liked them on a second reading. Indeed when,on somebody returning me the Eurydice, I opened and read some lines, as one commonlyreads whether prose or verse, with the eyes, so to say, only, it struck me aghast with a kind of

raw nakedness and unmitigated violence I was unprepared for: but take breath and read it withthe ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.'



Obscurity As regards Oddity then, it is plain that the poet was Himself fully alive to it, but hewas not sufficiently aware of obscurity, and he could not understand why his friends found hissentences so difficult: he would never have believed that, among all the ellipses and libertiesof his grammar, the one chief cause is his habitual omission of the relative pronoun; and yetthis is so, and the examination of a simple example or two may serve a general purpose:

Omission of relative pronoun This grammatical liberty, though it is a common convenience inconversation and has therefore its proper place in good writing, is apt to confuse the parts of speech, and to reduce a normal sequence of words to mere jargon. Writers who carelessly relyon their elliptical speech-forms to govern the elaborate sentences of their literary compositionlittle know what a conscious effort of interpretation they often impose on their readers. But itwas not carelessness in Gerard Hopkins: he had full skill and practice and scholarship inconventional forms, and it is easy to see that he banished these purely constructional syllablesfrom his verse because they took up room which he thought he could not afford them: heneeded in his scheme all his space for his poetical words, and he wished those to crowd outevery merely gram-matical colourless or toneless element; and so when he had got into the

habit of doing without these relative pronouns—though he must, I suppose, have suppliedthem in his thought,—he abuses the licence beyond precedent, as when he writes (no. 17 ) 'OHero savest!' for 'O Hero that savest!'.

Identical Forms Another example of this (from the 5th stanza of no. 23) will discover another cause of obscurity; the line

'Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him'

means 'Scatter the ranks that sally to molest him': but since the words squander and sally occupy similar positions in the two sections of the verse, and are enforced by a similar accentuation, the second verb deprived of its pronoun will follow the first and appear as animperative; and there is nothing to prevent its being so taken but the contradiction that itmakes in the meaning; whereas the grammar should expose and enforce the meaning, nothave to be determined by the meaning. More-over, there is no way of enunciating this linewhich will avoid the confusion; because if, knowing that sally should not have the sameintonation as squander , the reader mitigates the accent, and in doing so lessens or obliteratesthe caesural pause which exposes its accent, then ranks becomes a genitive and sallyasubstantive.

Here, then, is another source of the poet's obscurity; that in aiming at condensation he

neglects the need that there is for care in the placing of words that are grammaticallyambiguous. English swarms with words that have one identical form for substantive,adjective, and verb; and such a word should never be so placed as to allow of any doubt as towhat part of speech it is used for; because such ambiguity or momentary uncertainty destroysthe force of the sentence. Now our author not only neglects this essential propriety but hewould seem even to welcome and seek artistic effect in the consequent confusion; and he willsometimes so arrange such words that a reader looking for a verb may find that he has two or three ambiguous monosyllables from which to select, and must be in doubt as to which

promises best to give any meaning that he can welcome; and then, after his choice is made, hemay be left with some homeless monosyllable still on his hands. ( Homophones) Nor is our author apparently sensitive to the irrelevant suggestions that our numerous homophones

cause; and he will provoke further ambiguities or obscurities by straining the meaning of these unfortunate words.



Rhymes Finally, the rhymes where they are peculiar are often repellent, and so far fromadding charm to the verse that they appear as obstacles. This must not blind one fromrecognizing that Gerard Hopkins, where he is simple and straightforward in his rhyme is amaster of it—there are many instances,—but when he indulges in freaks, his childishness isincredible. His intention in such places is that the verses should be recited as running on

without pause, and the rhyme occurring in their midst should be like a phonetic accident,merely satisfying the prescribed form. But his phonetic rhymes are often indefensible on hisown principle. The rhyme to communion in 'The Bugler' is hideous, and the suspicion that the

poet thought it ingenious is appalling: eternal , in 'The Eurydice', does not correspondwithburn all , and in 'Felix Randal' and some and handsome is as truly an eye-rhyme as thelove and prove which he despised and abjured; and it is more distressing, because the old-fashioned conventional eye-rhymes are accepted as such without speech-adaptation, and tomany ears are a pleasant relief from the fixed jingle of the perfect rhyme; whereas his falseear-rhymes ask to have their slight but indispensable differences obliterated in the reading,and thus they expose their defect, which is of a disagree-able and vulgar or even comicquality. He did not escape full criticism and ample ridicule for such things in his lifetime; and

in '83 he wrote: 'Some of my rhymes I regret, but they are past changing, grubs in amber:there are only a few of these; others are unassailable; some others again there are whichmalignity may munch at but the Muses love.'

Euphony and emphasis Now these are bad faults, and, as I said, a reader, if he is to get anyenjoyment from the author's genius, must be somewhat tolerant of them; and they have a realrelation to the means whereby the very forcible and original effects of beauty are produced.There is nothing stranger in these poems than the mixture of passages of extreme delicacy andexquisite diction with passages where, in a jungle of rough root-words, emphasis seems tooust euphony; and both these qualities, emphasis and euphony, appear in their extreme forms.It was an idiosyncrasy of this student's mind to push everything to its logical extreme, andtake pleasure in a paradoxical result; as may be seen in his prosody where a simple theoryseems to be used only as a basis for unexampled liberty. He was flattered when I calledhim perittutatos, and saw the humour of it—and one would expect to find in his work the forceof emphatic condensation and the magic of melodious expression, both in their extremeforms. Now since those who study style in itself must allow a proper place to the emphaticexpression, this experiment, which supplies as novel examples of success as of failure, should

be full of interest; and such interest will promote tolerance.

The fragment, of which a facsimile is given after page 92, is the draft of what appears to be anattempt to explain how an artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own nature

instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible for the result. It is lamentable thatGerard Hopkins died when, to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate theforce of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and castigate his art into a morereserved style. Few will read the terrible posthumous sonnets without such high admirationand respect for his poetical power as must lead them to search out the rare masterly beautiesthat distinguish his work.

NOTES

PAGE 1. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This is from B, and must have been written in '83 or notmuch later. The punctuation has been exactly followed, except that I have added a comma



after the word language in the last line but one of page 5, where the omission seemed anoversight.

p.4, l. 21. rove over . This expression is used here to denote the running on of the sense andsound of the end of a verse into the beginning of the next; but this meaning is not easily to be

found in the word.

The two words reeve (pf. rove, which is also a pf. of rive) and reave (pf. reft ) are both usedseveral times by G.M.H., but they are both spelt reave. In the present context rove andreaving occur in his letters, and the spelling reeve in 'The Deutschland', xii. 8, is probably dueto the copyists.

There is no doubt that G. M. H. had a wrong notion of the meaning of the nautical term reeve. No. 39 line 10 (the third passage where reeve, spelt reave, occurs, and a nautical meaning isrequired—see the note there—) would be satisfied by splice (nautical); and if this notion wereinfluenced by weave, wove, that would describe the inter-weaving of the verses. In the

passage referred to in 'The Deutschland' reeve is probably intended in its dialectal or commonspeech significance: see Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary', where the first sense of theverb given is to bring together the 'gathers' of a dress: and in this sensereeve is in commonuse.

p. 7. EARLY POEMS. Two school prize-poems exist; the date of the first, 'The Escorial', isEaster '60, which is before Poems G.M.H. was sixteen years old. It is in Spenserian stanza:the imperfect copy in another hand has the first 15 stanzas omitting the 9th, and the author haswritten on it his motto, Batraxos de pot akridas os tis erisda, with an accompanying gloss toexplain his allusions. Though wholly lacking the Byronic flush it looks as if in-fluenced bythe historical descriptions in 'Childe Harold', and might provide a quotation for a tourist'sguide to Spain. The history seems competent, and the artistic knowledge precocious.

Here for a sample is the seventh stanza:

This was no classic temple order'd roundWith massy pillars of the Doric moodBroad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd,Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's broodThat battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued,With golden fillets and rich blazonry,

Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rodeWith form divine, a fiery chivalry— Triumph of airy grace and perfect harmony.

The second prize-poem, 'A Vision of Mermaids', is dated Xmas '62. The autograph of this,which is preserved, is headed by a very elaborate circular pen-and-ink drawing, 6 inches indiameter,—a sunset sea-piece with rocks and formal groups of mermaidens, five or sixtogether, singing as they stand (apparently) half-immersed in the shallows as described

'But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun,' &c.

This poem is in 143 lines of heroics. It betrays the in-fluence of Keats, and when I introducedthe author to the public in Miles's book, I quoted from it, thinking it useful to show that his



difficult later style was not due to in-ability to excel in established forms. The poem is alto-gether above the standard of school-prizes. I reprint the extract here:

Soon—as when Summer of his sister SpringCrushes and tears the rare enjewelling,

And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these'Plashes amidst the billowy apple-treesHis lusty hands, in gusts of scented windSwirling out bloom till all the air is blindWith rosy foam and pelting blossom and mistsOf driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists,The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers,A glorious wanton;—all the wrecks in showersCrowd down upon a stream, and jostling thick With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick On.tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowd

Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud:So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock.

* * * * *

But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun;And a sweet sadness dwelt on every one;I knew not why,—but know that sadness dwellsOn Mermaids—whether that they ring the knellsOf seamen whelm'd in chasms of the mid-main,As poets sing; or that it is a painTo know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea,The miles profound of solid green, and beWith loath'd cold fishes, far from man—or what;— I know the sadness but the cause know not.Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintivelyA piteous Siren sweetness on the sea,Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell,Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell;Only with utterance of sweet breath they sungAn antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue.

Now melting upward through the sloping scaleSwell'd the sweet strain to a melodious wail; Now ringing clarion-clear to whence it roseSlumber'd at last in one sweet, deep, heart-broken close.

1862-1868 After the relics of his school-poems follow the poems written when anundergraduate at Oxford, of which there are four in this book—Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 52, all datingabout 1866. Of this period some ten or twelve autograph poems exist, the most successful

being religious verses worked in Geo. Herbert's manner, and these, I think, have been printed:there are two sonnets in Italian form and Shakespearian mood (refused by 'CornhillMagazine'); the rest are attempts at lyrical poems, mostly sentimental aspects of death: one of

them 'Winter with the Gulf-stream' was published in 'Once a Week', and reprinted at least in part in some magazine: the autograph copy is dated Aug. 1871, but G. M. H. told me that he



wrote it when he was at school; whence I guess that he altered it too much to allow of its earlydating. The following is a specimen of his signature at this date.

Gerard M. Hopkins.July 24, 1866.

Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a handwritten image in the original.

1868-1875 After these last-mentioned poems there is a gap of Silence which may beaccounted for in his own words from a letter to R. W. D. Oct. 5, '78: 'What (verses) I hadwritten I burnt before I became a Jesuit (i.e. 1868) and re-solved to write no more, as not

belonging to my profession, unless it were by the wish of my superiors; so for seven years Iwrote nothing but two or three little presentation pieces which occasion called for. But whenin the winter of '75 the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the Thames and fiveFranciscan nuns, exiles from Germany by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned I wasaffected by the account and happening to say so to my rector he said that he wished some one

would write a poem on the subject. On this hint I set to work and, though my hand was out atfirst, produced one. I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now Irealised on paper. … I do not say the idea is altogether new . . . but no one has professedlyused it and made it the principle throughout, that I know of. … However I had to mark thestresses . . . and a great many more oddnesses could not but dismay an editor's eye, so thatwhen I offered it to our magazine The Month . . . they dared not print it.'

Of the two or three presentation pieces here mentioned one is certainly the Marian verses'Rosa mystica', published in the 'The Irish Monthly', May '98, and again in Orby Shipley's'Carmina Mariana', 2nd series, p. 183: the autograph exists.

Another is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94.This is in five stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of Swinburne: noautograph has been found; and, unless Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been

provisionally deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed to him without someimpeachment of his sincerity; and that being altogether above suspicion, I would not yield tothe rather strong presumption which their technical skill supplies in favour of his authorship.It is true that the 'Rosa mystica' is somewhat in the same light lilting man-ner; but that was

probably common to most of these festal verses, and 'Rosa mystica' is not open to the positiveobjections of verbal criticism which would reject the 'Ad Mariam'. He never sent me any copyof either of these pieces, as he did of his severer Marian poems (Nos. 18 and 37), nor

mentioned them as productions of his serious Muse. I do not find that in either class of theseattempts he met with any appreciation at the time; it was after the publication of Miles's book in 1894 that his co-religionists began to recognize his possible merits, and their enthusiasmhas not perhaps been always wise. It is natural that they should, as some of them openly statethey do, prefer the poems that I am rejecting to those which I print; but this edition wasundertaken in response to a demand that, both in England and America, has gradually grownup from the genuinely poetic interest felt in the poems which I have gradually introduced tothe public:—that interest has been no doubt welcomed and accompanied by the applause of his particular religious associates, but since their purpose is alien to mine I regret that I amunable to indulge it; nor can I put aside the overruling objection that G. M. H. would not havewished these 'little presentation pieces' to be set among his more serious artistic work. I do not

think that they would please any one who is likely to be pleased with this book.



1. ST. DOROTHEA. Written when an exhibitioner at Balliol College. Contemporaryautograph in A, and another almost identical in H, both undated. Text from A. This poem wasafterwards expanded, shedding its relative pro-nouns, to 48 lines divided among threespeakers, 'an Angel, the protonotary Theophilus, (and) a Catechumen': the grace and charm of original lost:—there is an auto-graph in A and other copies exist. This was the first of the

poems that I saw, and G. M. H. wrote it out for me (in 1866?).

2. HEAVEN HAVEN. Contemporary autograph, on same page with last, in H. Text is from aslightly later autograph undated in A. The different copies vary.

3. HABIT OF PERFECTION. Two autographs in A; the earlier dated Jan. 18, 19, 1866. Thesecond, which is a good deal altered, is apparently of same date as text of No. 2. Text followsthis later version. Published in Miles.

4. WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND. Text from B, title from A (see description of B on p.94). In 'The Spirit of Man' the original first stanza is given from A, and varies; otherwise B

was not much corrected. Another transcript, now at St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow, was made by Rev. F. Bacon after A but before the correction of B. This was collated for me by the Rev.Father Geoffrey Bliss, S.J., and gave one true reading. Its variants are distin-guished by G inthe notes to the poem.

The labour spent on this great metrical experiment must have served to establish the poet's prosody and perhaps his diction: therefore the poem stands logically as well aschronologically in the front of his book, like a great dragon folded in the gate to forbid allentrance, and confident in his strength from past success. This editor advises the reader tocircumvent him and attack him later in the rear; for he was himself shamefully worsted in a

brave frontal assault, the more easily perhaps because both subject and treatment weredistasteful to him. A good method of approach is to read stanza 16 aloud to a chancecompany. To the metrist and rhythmist the poem will be of interest from the first, andthroughout.

Stanza iv. 1. 7. Father Bliss tells me that the Voel is a mountain not far from St. Beuno'sCollege in N. Wales, where the poem was written: and Dr. Henry Bradley thatmoel is

primarily an adj. meaning bald : it becomes a fem, subst. meaning bare hill , and preceded bythe article y becomes voel , in modern Welsh spelt foel . This accounts for its being writtenwithout initial capital, the word being used genetically; and the meaning, obscured by roped ,is that the well is fed by the trickles of water within the flanks of the mountains.—Both A and

B read planks for flanks; G gives the correction.

St. xi. 5. Two of the required stresses are on we dream.

St. xii. 8. reeve, see note on Author's Preface, p. 101.

St. xiv. 8. these. G has there; but the words between shock and these are probably parenthetical.

St. xvi. 3. Landsmen may not observe the wrongness: see again No. 17, st. ix, and 39, line 10.I would have cor-rected this if the euphony had not accidentally forbidden the simplest

correction.



St. xvi. 7. foam-fleece followed by full stop in A and B, by a comma in G.

St. xix. 3. hawling thus spelt in all three.

St. xxi. 2. G omits the.

St. xxvi. 5 and 6. The semicolon is autographic correction in B; the stop at Way is uncertain inA and B, is a comma in G.

St. xxix. 3. night (sic). 8. Two of the required stresses are on Tarpeian.

St. xxxiv. 8. shire. G has shore; but shire is doubtless right; it is the special favouredlandscape visited by the shower.

5. PENMAEN POOL. Early copy in A. Text, title, and punctu-ation from autograph in B,dated 'Barmouth, Merioneth-shire. Aug. 1876'. But that autograph writes leisurefor pleasure

in first line; skulls in stanza 2; and in stanza 8, month has a capital initial. Several copies exist,and vary.

St. iii. 2. Cadair Idris is written as a note to Giant's stool .

St. viii. 4. Several variants. Two good copies read dark-some danksome; but the early copy inA has darksome darksome, which B returns to.

St. ix. 3. A has But praise it , and two good copies But honour it .

6. 'THE SILVER JUBILEE: in honour of the Most Reverend James first Bishop of Shrewsbury. St. Beuno's, Vale of Clwyd. 1876, I think.' A.—Text and title from autograph inB. It was published with somebody's sermon on the same occasion. Another copy in H.

7. 'GOD'S GRANDEUR. Standard rhythm counterpoised.' Two autographs, Feb. 23, 1877;and March 1877; in A.—Text is from corrections in B. The second version in A has lightning for shining in line 2, explained in a letter of Jan. 4, '83. B returns to original word.

8. 'THE STARLIGHT NIGHT. Feb. 24, '77.' Autograph in A.—'Standard rhythm opened andcounterpointed. March '77.' A.—Later corrected version 'St. Beuno's, Feb. 77' in B.—Textfollows B. The second version in A was published in Miles's book 'Poets and Poetry of the

Century'.

9. 'SPRING. (Standard rhythm, opening with sprung leadings), May 1877.' Autograph in A.— Text from corrections in B, but punctuation from A. Was published in Miles's book fromincomplete correction of A.

10. 'THE LANTERN. (Standard rhythm, with one sprung lead-ing and one linecounterpomted.)' Autograph in A.—Text, title, and accents in lines 13 and 14, fromcorrections in B, where it is called 'companion to No. 26, St. Beuno's '77'.

11. 'WALKING BY THE SEA. Standard rhythm, in parts sprung and in others

counterpomted, Rhyl, May '77.' A. This version deleted in B, and the revision given in textwritten in with new title.—G. M. H. was not pleased with this sonnet, and wrote the following



explanation of it in a letter '82: ' Rash fresh more (it is dreadful to explain these things in cold blood) means a headlong and exciting new snatch of singing, resumption by the lark of hissong, which by turns he gives over and takes up again all day long, and this goes on, thesonnet says, through all time, without ever losing its first freshness, being a thing both newand old. Repair means the same thing, renewal, resumption. The skein and coil are the lark's

song, which from his height gives the impression of some-thing falling to the earth and notvertically quite but tricklingly or wavingly, something as a skein of silk ribbed by having beentightly wound on a narrow card or a notched holder or as twine or fishing-tackle unwindingfrom a reel or winch or as pearls strung on a horsehair: the laps or folds are the notes or shortmeasures and bars of them. The same is called a score in the musical sense of score and thisscore is "writ upon a liquid sky trembling to welcome it", only not horizontally. The lark inwild glee races the reel round , paying or dealing out and down the turns of the skein or coil right to the earth floor , the ground, where it lies in a heap, as it were, or rather is all wound off on to another winch, reel, bobbin or spool in Fancy's eye, by the moment the bird touchesearth and so is ready for a fresh unwinding at the next flight. Crisp means almost crisped ,namely with notes.'

12 'THE WINDHOVER. (Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung and outriding.)' Two contemporaryautographs in A.—Text and dedication from corrected B, dated St. Beuno's, May 30, 1877. Ina letter June 22, '79: 'I shall shortly send you an amended copy of The Windhover: theamendment only touches a single line, I think, but as that is the best thing I ever wrote Ishould like you to have it in its best form.'

13 'PIED BEAUTY. Curtal Sonnet: sprung paeonic rhythm. St. Beuno's, Tremeirchion.Summer '77.' Autograph in A.—B agrees.

14 'HURRAHING IN HARVEST: Sonnet (sprung and outriding rhythm. Take notice that theoutriding feet are not to be confused with dactyls or paeons, though sometimes the line might

be scanned either way. The strong syllable in an outriding foot has always a great stress andafter the outrider follows a short pause. The paeon is easier and more flowing). Vale of Clwyd, Sept. 1, 1877.' Auto-graph in A. Text is from corrected B, punctuation of original A.In a letter '78 he wrote: 'The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme en-thusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.' A also notes 'nocounterpoint'.

15 'THE CAGED SKYLARK. (Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung and outriding.)' Autograph inA. Text from corrected B which dates St. Beuno's, 1877. In line 13 B writesúncúmberèd .

16. 'IN THE VALLEY OF THE ELWY. (Standard rhythm, sprung and counterpointed.)'Autograph in A. Text is from corrected B, which dates as contemporary with No. 15, adding'for the companion to this see No.' 35.

17. THE LOSS OF THE EURYDICE. A contemporary copy in A has this note: 'Written insprung rhythm, the third line has 3 beats, the rest 4. The scanning runs on without break to theend of the stanza, so that each stanza is rather one long line rhymed in passage than four lineswith rhymes at the ends.'—B has an autograph of the poem as it came to be corrected ('83 or after), without the above note and dated 'Mount St. Mary, Derbyshire, Apr. '78'.—Textfollows B.—The injurious rhymes are partly explained in the old note.



St. 9. Shorten sail . The seamanship at fault: but this ex-pression may be glossed by supposingthe boatswain to have sounded that call on his whistle.

St. 12. Cheer's death, i.e. despair.

St, 14. It is even seen. In a letter May 30, '78, he ex-plains: 'You mistake the sense of this as Ifeared it would be mistaken. I believed Hare to be a brave and con-scientious man, what I sayis that even those who seem unconscientious will act the right part at a great push. . . . Aboutmortholes I wince a little.'

St. 26. A starlight-wender , i.e. The island was so Marian that the folk supposed the MilkyWay was a fingerpost to guide pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham. And one,that is Duns Scotus the champion of the Im-maculate Conception. See Sonnet No. 20.

St. 27. Well wept . Grammar is as in 'Well hit! well run!'& c. The meaning 'You do well toweep'.

St. 28. O Hero savest . Omission of relative pronoun at its worst. = O Hero that savest . The prayer is in a mourner's mouth, who prays that Christ will have saved her hero, and in stanza29 the grammar triumphs.

18. 'THE MAY MAGNIFICAT. (Sprung rhythm, four stresses in each line of the first couplet,three in each of the second. Stonyhurst, May '78.') Autograph in A.—Text from later autograph in B. He wrote to me: 'A Maypiece in which I see little good but the freedom of therhythm.' In penult stanza cuckoo-call has its hyphen deleted in B, leaving the words separate.

19. 'BINSEY POPLARS, felled 1879. Oxford, March 1879.' Auto-graph in A. Text from B,which alters four places. l. 8 weed-winding : an early draft has weed-wounden.

20. 'DUNS SCOTUS'S OXFORD. Oxford, March 1879.' Auto-graph in A. Copy in B agrees but dates 1878.

21. 'HENRY PURCELL. (Alexandrine: six stresses to the line. Oxford, April 1879.)'Autograph in A with argument as printed. Copy in B is uncorrected except that it adds theword fresh in last line.

'"Have fair fallen." Have is the sing, imperative (or optative if you like) of the past, a thing

possible and actual both in logic and grammar, but naturally a rare one. As in the 2nd pers. wesay "Have done" or in mak-ing appointments "Have had your dinner beforehand", so one cansay in the 3rd pers. not only "Fair fall" of what is present or future but also "Have fair fallen"of what is past. The same thought (which plays a great part in my own mind and action) ismore clearly expressed in the last stanza but one of the Eurydice, where you remarked it.'Letter to R. B., Feb. 3, '83.

'The sestet of the Purcell sonnet is not so clearly worked out as I could wish. The thought isthat as the seabird opening his wings with a whiff of wind in your face means the whirr of themotion, but also unaware gives you a whiff of knowledge about his plumage, the marking of which stamps his species, that he does not mean, so Purcell, seemingly intent only on the

thought or feeling he is to express or call out, incidentally lets you remark the individualisingmarks of his own genius.



'Sake is a word I find it convenient to use … it is the sake of "for the sake of ", forsake,namesake, keepsake. I mean by it the being a thing has outside itself, as a voice by its echo, aface by its reflection, a body by its shadow, a man by his name, fame, or memory, and also that in the thing by virtue of which especially it has this being abroad, and that is somethingdistinctive, marked, speci-fically or individually speaking, as for a voice and echo clearness;

for a reflected image light, brightness; for a shadow-casting body bulk; for a man genius,great achievements, amiability, and so on. In this case it is, as the sonnet says, distinctivequality in genius. … Bymoonmarks I mean crescent-shaped markings on the quill-feathers,either in the colouring of the feather or made by the overlapping of one on another.' Letter toR. B., May 26, '79.

22. 'PEACE: Oxford, 1879.' Autograph in B, where a comma after daunting is due tofollowing a deletion. To own my heart = to my own heart . Reaving Peace, i.e. when he reavesor takes Peace away, as No. 35, l. 12. An early draft dated Oct. 2, '79, has taking for reaving .

23. 'THE BUGLER'S FIRST COMMUNION. (Sprung rhythm, overrove, an outride between

the 3rd and 4th foot of the 4th line in each stanza.) Oxford, July 27,(?) 1879.' A.—My copy of this in B shows three emendations. First draft exists in H. Text is A with the corrections fromB. At nine lines from end, Though this, A has Now this, and Now is deliberately preferred inH.—B has some un-corrected miscopyings of A. O for, now, charms of A is already acorrection in H. I should like a comma at end of first line of 5th stanza and an interjection-mark at end of that stanza.

24. 'MORNING MIDDAY AND EVENING SACRIFICE. Oxford, Aug. '79.' Autograph in A.The first stanza reproduced after p. 70. Copied by me into B, where it received cor-rection.Text follows B except in lines 19 and 20, where the correction reads What Death half lifts the

latch of, What hell hopes soon the snatch of . And punctuation is not all followed: original hascomma after the second thisin lines 5 and 6. On June 30, '86, G. M. H. wrote to Canon Dixon,who wished to print the first stanza alone in some anthology, and made ad hoc alterationswhich I do not follow. The original 17th line was Silk-ashed but core not cooling , and wasaltered because of its obscurity. 'I meant (he wrote) to compare grey hairs to the flakes of silky ash which may be seen round wood embers . . . and covering a core of heat. . . .' Your

offer-ing, with despatch, of is said like 'your ticket', 'your reasons', 'your money or your life . . .' It is: 'Come, your offer of all this (the matured mind), and without delay either!'

25. 'ANDROMEDA. Oxford, Aug. 12, '79.' A—which B cor-rects in two places only. Textrejects the first, in line 4dragon for dragon's: but follows B in line 10, where A had Air,

pillowy air . There is no comma at barebill in any MS., but a gap and sort of caesural mark inA. In a letter Aug. 14, '79, G. M. H. writes: 'I enclose a sonnet on which I invite minutecriticism. I endeavoured in it at a more Miltonic plainness and severity than I have any-whereelse. I cannot say it has turned out severe, still less plain, but it seems almost free fromquaintness and in aiming at one excellence I may have hit another.'

26. 'THE CANDLE INDOORS. (Common rhythm, counter-pointed.) Oxford, '79.' A. Texttakes corrections of B, which adds 'companion to No.' 10. A has in line 2With a yellowy, and 5

At that .

27. 'THE HANDSOME HEART. (Common rhythm counter-pointed.) Oxford, '79.' A1.—In

Aug. of the same year he wrote that he was surprised at my liking it, and in deference to mycriticism sent a revise, A2.—Subsequently he recast the sonnet mostly in the longer 6-stress



lines, and wrote that into B.—In that final version the charm and freshness have disappeared:and his emendation in evading the clash of ply and reply is awkward; also the fourteen linesnow contain seven whats. I have therefore taken A1 for the text, and have ventured, in line 8,to restore how to, in the place of what , from the original version which exists in H. In 'TheSpirit of Man' I gave a mixture of A1 and A2. In line 5 the word soul is in H and A1: but A2

and B have heart . Father in second line was the Rev. Father Gerard himself. He tells thewhole story in a letter to me.

28. 'AT A WEDDING. (Sprung rhythm.) Bedford, Lancashire, Oct. 21, '79.' A. Autographuncorrected in B, but title changed to that in text.

29. 'FELIX RANDAL. (Sonnet: sprung and outriding rhythm; six-foot lines.) Liverpool, Apr.28, '80.' A. Text from A with the two corrections of B. The comma in line 5 after impatient isomitted in copy in B.

30. 'BROTHERS. (Sprung rhythm; three feet to the line; lines free-ended and not overrove;

and reversed or counter-pointed rhythm allowed in the first foot.) Hampstead, Aug. 1880.'Five various drafts exist. A1 and A2 both of Aug. '80. B was copied by me from A1, andauthor's emendations of it overlook those in A2. Text therefore is from A 2 except that thefirst seven lines, being rewritten in margin afresh (and confirmed in letter of Ap. '81 to CanonDixon), as also corrections in lines 15-18, these are taken. But the B corrections of lines 22,23, almost certainly imply forgetfulness of A^. In last line B has correction Dearly thou canst

be kind ; but the intention of I'll cry was original, and has four MSS. in its favour.

31. 'SPRING AND FALL. (Sprung rhythm.) Lydiate, Lan-cashire, Sept. 7, 1880.' A. Text andtitle from B, which corrects four lines, and misdates '81. There is also a copy in D, Jan. '81,and see again Apr. 6, '81. In line 2 the last word is unleafing in most of the MSS. An attemptto amend the second rhyme was unsuccessful.

32. 'SPELT FROM SIBYL'S LEAVES. (Sonnet: sprung rhythm: a rest of one stress in thefirst line.)' Autograph in A—another later in B, which is taken for text. Date unre-corded,lines 5, 6, astray thus divided to show the rhyme.—6. throughther , an adj., now confined todialect. It is the speech form of through-other , in which shape it eludes pursuit in the Oxforddictionary. Dr. Murray compares Ger. durch einander . Mr. Craigie tells me that the classicalquotation for it is from Burns's 'Halloween', st. 5, They roar an cry a' throughther .—line 8.With, i.e. I suppose, with your warning that , &c.: the heart is speaking. 9. beak-leaved is nothyphened in MS.—11. part, pen, pack , imperatives of the verbs, in the sense of sorting 'the

sheep from the goats'.—12. A haswrong right , but the correction to right wrong in B isintentional. 14.— sheathe- in both MSS., but I can only make sense of sheath-, i.e. 'sheathlessand shelterless'. The accents in this poem are a selection from A and B.

33. 'INVERSNAID. Sept. 28, 1881.' Autograph in H. I have found no other trace of this poem.

34. As kingfishers. Text from undated autograph in H, a draft with corrections and variants. Inlines 3 and 4 hung andto fling out broad are corrections in same later pencilling as line 5,which occurs only thus with them. In sestet the first three lines have alternatives of regular rhythm, thus:



Then I say more: the just man justices;Keeps grace and that keeps all his goings graces;In God's eye acts, &c.

Of these lines, in 9 and 10 the version given in text is later than the regular lines just quoted,

and probably pre-ferred: in l. 11 the alternatives apparently of same date.

35. 'RIBBLESDALE. Stonyhurst, 1882.' Autograph in A. Text from later autograph in B,which adds 'companion to No. 10' (= 16). There is a third autograph in D, June '83 withdifferent punctuation which gives the comma between to and with in line 3. The dash after man is from A and D, both of which quote 'Nam expectatio creaturae ', &c. from Romans viii.19. In the letter to R. W. D. he writes: ' Louched is a coinage of mine, and is to mean much thesame as slouched, slouching, and I meanthrong for an adjective as we use it in Lancashire'.But louch has ample authority, see the 'English Dialect Dictionary'.

36. 'THE LEADEN ECHO AND THE GOLDEN ECHO. Stony-hurst, Oct. 13, '82.'

Autograph in A. Copy of this with autograph corrections dated Hampstead '81 ( sic) in B.— Text takes all B's corrections, but respects punctuation of A, except that I have added thecomma after God in last line of p. 56. For the drama of Winefred, see among posthumousfragments, No. 58. In Nov. 1882 he wrote to me: 'I am somewhat dismayed about that pieceand have laid it aside for a while. I cannot satisfy myself about the first line. You must knowthat words likecharm and enchantment will not do: the thought is of beauty as of somethingthat can be physically kept and lost and by physical things only, like keys; then the thingsmust come from the mundus muliebris; and thirdly they must not be markedly oldfashioned.You will sec that this limits the choice of words very much indeed. However I shall makesome changes. Back is not pretty, but it gives that feeling of physical constraint which I want.'And in Oct. '86 to R. W. D., 'I never did anything more musical'.

37. 'MARY MOTHER OF DIVINE GRACE COMPARED TO THE AIR WE BREATHE.Stonyhurst, May '83.' Autograph in A.—Text and title from later autograph in B. Taken byDean Beeching into 'A Book of Christmas Verse' 1895 and thence, incorrectly, by OrbyShipley in 'Carmina Mariana'. Stated in a letter to R. W. D. June 25, '83, to have been writtento 'hang up among the verse com-positions in the tongues. … I did a piece in the same metreas Blue in the mists all day.' Note Chaucer's account of the physical properties of the air,'House of Fame', ii. 256, seq.

38. 'To WHAT SERVES MORTAL BEAUTY? (Common rhythm highly stressed: sonnet.)

Aug. 23, '85.' Autograph in A.—Another autograph in B with a few variants from which Awas chosen, the deletion of alternatives incom-plete. Thirdly a copy sent to R. W. D.,apparently later than A, but with errors of copy. The text given is guided by this version in D,and needs in line 9 is substituted there for the once in A and B, probably because of onceinline 6.—Original draft exists in H, on same page with 39 and 40. The following is hissignature at this date:

Your affectionate friendGerard M. Hopkins S.J.May 29 1885

Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a handwritten image in the original.



39. SOLDIER. 'Clongower, Aug. 1885.' Autograph in H, with a few corrections which I havetaken for lines 6 and 7, of which the first draft runs:

It fancies; it deems; dears the artist after his art;So feigns it finds as, &c.

The MS. marks the caesural place in ten of the lines in line 2, between Both and these. l 3, atthe full stop. l. 6, fancies, feigns, deems, take three stresses. l. 11, after man. In line 7 I haveadded a comma at smart . In l. 10 I have substituted handle for reave of MS.: see note onreave, p. 101; and in l. 13, have hyphened God made flesh. No title in MS.

40. CARRION COMFORT. Autograph in H, in three versions. 1st, deleted draft. 2nd, acomplete version, both on same page with 38 and 39. 3rd, with 41 on another sheet, final (?)revision carried only to end of 1. 12 (two detached lines on reverse). Text is this last with lasttwo lines from the 2nd version. Date must be 1885, and this is probably the sonnet 'written in

blood', of which he wrote in May of that year.—I have added the title and the hyphen inheaven-handling .

41. No worst . Autograph in H, on same page as third draft of 40. One undated draft withcorrections embodied in the text here.—l. 5, at end are some marks which look like a hyphenand a comma: no title.

42. 'TOM'S GARLAND. Sonnet: common rhythm, but with hurried feet: two codas.Dromore, Sept. '87.' With full title, A.—Another autograph in B is identical. In line 9 there isa strong accent on I .—l. 10, the capital initial of country is doubtful.—Rhythmical marksomitted. The author's own explanation of this poem may be read in a letter written to me from'Dublin, Feb. 10, '88: …I laughed outright and often, but very sardonically, to think you andthe Canon could not construe my last son-net; that he had to write to you for a crib. It is plainI must go no further on this road: if you and he cannot understand me who will? Yet,declaimed, the strange constructions would be dramatic and effective. Must I interpret it? Itmeans then that, as St. Paul and Plato and Hobbes and everybody says, the commonwealth or well-ordered human society is like one man; a body with many members and each itsfunction; some higher, some lower, but all honourable, from the honour which belongs to thewhole. The head is the sovereign, who has no superior but God and from heaven receives hisor her authority: we must then imagine this head as bare (see St. Paul much on this) andcovered, so to say, only with the sun and stars, of which the crown is a symbol, which is anornament but not a covering; it has an enormous hat or skullcap, the vault of heaven. The foot

is the day-labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the greatscale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel, blast, and in other ways disfigure,"mammock" the earth and, on a small scale, singly, and superficially stamp it with their footprints. And the "garlands" of nails they wear are therefore the visible badge of the placethey fill, the lowest in the commonwealth. But this place still shares the common honour, andif it wants one advantage, glory or public fame, makes up for it by another, ease of mind,absence of care; and these things are symbolised by the gold and the iron garlands. (O, onceexplained, how clear it all is!) Therefore the scene of the poem is laid at evening, when theyare giving over work and one after another pile their picks, with which they earn their living,and swing off home, knocking sparks out of mother earth not now by labour and of choice but

by the mere footing, being strong-shod and making no hardship of hard-ness, taking all easy.And so to supper and bed. Here comes a violent but effective hyperbaton or suspension, in



46. PATIENCE. As 45. l. 2, Patience is. The initial capital is mine, and the comma after ivy inline 6. No title.

47 My own heart . As 45.—1. 6, I have added the comma after comfortless; that word has thesame grammatical value asdark in the following line. 'I cast for comfort, (which) I can no

more find in my comfortless (world) than a blind man in his dark world. . . .'—l. 10, MS.accents let .—13 and 14, the text here from a good correction separately written (as far asmountains) on the top margin of No. 56. There are therefore two writings of betweenpie, astrange word, in which pie apparently makes a compound verb with between, meaning 'as thesky seen between dark mountains is brightly dappled', the grammar such asintervariegates would make. This word might have delighted William Barnes, if the verb 'to pie' existed. Itseems not to exist, and to be forbidden by homophonic absurdities.

48. 'HERACLITEAN FIRE. (Sprung rhythm, with many out-rides and hurried feet: sonnetwith two [ sic] codas.) July 26, 1888. Co. Dublin. The last sonnet [this] pro-visional only.'Autograph in A.—I have found no other copy nor trace of draft. The title is from A.—line 6,

con-struction obscure, rutpeel may be a compound word, MS. uncertain. 8, ? omitted relative pronoun. If so = 'the manmarks that treadmire toil foot-fretted in it'. MS. does not hyphen nor quite join up foot with fretted .—12. MS. has no caesural mark.—On Aug. 18, '88, he wrote: 'Iwill now go to bed, the more so as I am going to preach tomorrow and put plainly to aHighland congrega-tion of MacDonalds, Mackintoshes, Mackillops, and the rest what I am

putting not at all so plainly to the rest of the world, or rather to you and Canon Dixon, in asonnet in sprung rhythm with two codas.' And again on Sept. 25, '88: 'Lately I sent you asonnet on the Heraclitean Fire, in which a great deal of early Greek philosophical thought wasdistilled; but the liquor of the distillation did not taste very greek, did it? The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every originalartist to some degree, on me to a marked degree. Perhaps then more reading would onlyrefine my singularity, which is not what you want.' Note, that the sonnet has three codas, nottwo.

49. ALFONSUS. Text from autograph with title and 'upon the first falling of his feast after hiscanonisation' in B. An autograph in A, sent Oct. 3 from Dublin asking for im-mediatecriticism, because the sonnet had to go to Majorca. 'I ask your opinion of a sonnet written toorder on the occasion of the first feast since his canonisation proper of St. AlphonsusRodriguez, a laybrother of our Order, who for 40 years acted as hall porter to the College of Palma in Majorca; he was, it is believed, much favoured by God with heavenly light andmuch persecuted by evil spirits. The sonnet (I say it snorting) aims at being intelligible.' And

on Oct. 9, '88, 'I am obliged for your criticisms, "con-tents of which noted", indeed acted on. Ihave improved the sestet. . . . (He defends 'hew') … at any rate whatever is markedly featuredin stone or what is like stone is most naturally said to be hewn, and to shape, itself, means inold English to hew and the Hebrew barato create, even, properly means to hew. But life andliving things are not naturally said to be hewn: they grow, and their growth is by tricklingincrement. . . . The (first) line now stands "Glory is a flame off exploit, so we say ".'

50. 'JUSTUS ES, &c. Jer. xii. 1 (for title), March 17,'89.' Autograph in A.—Similar autographin B, which reads line 9, Sir, life on thy great cause. Text from A, which seems the later,

being written in the peculiar faint ink of the corrections in B, and embodying them.—Earlydrafts in H.



51. 'To R. B. April 22, '89.' Autograph in A. This, the last poem sent to me, came on April 29. —No other copy, but the working drafts in H.—In line 6 the word moulds was substituted byme for combs of original, when the sonnet was published by Miles; and I leave it, having nodoubt that G. M. H. would have made some such alteration.

52. 'SUMMA.' This poem had, I believe, the ambitious design which its title suggests. Whatwas done of it was destroyed, with other things, when he joined the Jesuits. My copy is acontemporary autograph of 16 lines, written when he was still an undergraduate; I give thefirst four. A.

53. What being . Two scraps in H. I take the apparently later one, and have inserted the commain line 3.

54. 'ON THE PORTRAIT, &c. Monastereven, Co. Kildare, Christmas, '86.' Autograph withfull title, no corrections, in A. Early drafts in H.

55. The sea took pity. Undated pencil scrap in H.

56. ASHBOUGHS (my title). In H in two versions; first as a curtal sonnet (like 13 and 22) onsame sheet with the four sonnets 44-47, and preceding them: second, an apparently later version in the same metre on a page by itself; with expanded variation from seventh line,making thirteen lines for eleven. I print the whole of this second MS., and have put bracketsto show what I think would make the best version of the poem: for if the bracketed wordswere omitted the original curtal sonnet form would be preserved and carry the goodcorrections. The uncom-fortable eye in the added portion was perhaps to be worked as avocative referring to first line (?).

57. Hope holds. In H, a torn undated scrap which carries a vivid splotch of local colour.—line4, a variant has A growing burnish brighter than.

58. ST. WINEFRED. G. M. H. began a tragedy on St. Winefred Oct. '79, for which hesubsequently wrote the chorus, No. 36, above. He was at it again in 1881, and had mentionedthe play in his letters, and when, some years later, I determined to write my Feast of Bacchus in six-stressed verse, I sent him a sample of it, and asked him to let me see what he had madeof the measure. The MS. which he sent me, April 1, 1885, was copied, and that copy is thetext in this book, from A, the original not being discoverable. It may therefore containcopyist's errors. Twenty years later, when I was writing my Demeter for the lady-students at

Somerville College, I re-membered the first line of Caradoc's soliloquy, and made some useof it. On the other hand the broken line I have read her eyes in my 1st part of Nero is proved by date to be a coincidence, and not a reminiscence.—Caradoc was to 'die impenitent, struck by the finger of God'.

59. What shall I do. Sent me in a letter with his own melody and a note on the poem. 'This isnot final of course. Perhaps the name of England is too exclusive.' Date Clongower, Aug.1885. A.

60. The times are nightfall . Revised and corrected draft in H. The first two lines are correctedfrom the original opening in old syllabic verse:



The times are nightfall and the light grows less;The times are winter and a world undone;

61. 'CHEERY BEGGAR.' Undated draft with much correction, in H. Text is the outcome.

62 and 63. These are my interpretation of the intention of some unfinished disordered verseson a sheet of paper in H. In 63, line 1, furl is I think unmistakable: an apparently rejectedearlier version had Soft childhood's carmine dew-drift down.

64. 'THE WOODLARK.' Draft on one sheet of small notepaper in H. Fragments in somedisorder: the arrangement of them in the text satisfies me. The word sheath is printed for

sheaf of MS., and sheaf recurs in correc-tions. Dating of July 5, '76.

65. 'MOONRISE. June 19, 1876.' H. Note at foot shows intention to rewrite with one stressmore in the second half of each line, and the first is thus rewritten 'in the white of the dusk, inthe walk of the morning'.

66. CUCKOO. From a scrap in H without date or title.

67. It being impossible to satisfy myself I give this MS. in facsimile as an example, after p.92.

68. The child is father . From a newspaper cutting with another very poor comic triolet sent me by G. M. H. They are signed BRAN . His comic attempts were not generally so successful asthis is.

69. The shepherd's brow. In H. Various consecutive full drafts on the same sheet as 51, anddate April 3, '89. The text is what seems to be the latest draft: it has no corrections. Thus itsdate is between 50 and 51. It might be argued that this sonnet has the same right to berecognised as a finished poem with the sonnets 44-47, but those had several years recognitionwhereas this must have been thrown off one day in a cynical mood, which he could not havewished permanently to intrude among his last serious poems.

70. 'TO HIS WATCH.' H. On a sheet by itself; apparently a fair copy with correctionsembodied in this text, except that the original 8th line, which is not deleted, is preferred to thealternative suggestion, Is sweetest comfort's carol or worst woe's smart .

71. Strike, churl . H, on same page with a draft of part of No. 45.—l. 4, Have at is a correctionfor aim at .—This scrap is some evidence for the earlier dating of the four sonnets.

72. 'EPITHALAMION.' Four sides of pencilled rough sketches, and five sides of quarto firstdraft, on 'Royal University of Ireland' candidates paper, as if G. M. H. had written it whilesupervising an examination. Fragments in disorder with erasures and corrections; undated. H.

—The text, which omits only two disconnected lines, is my arrange-ment of the fragments,and embodies the latest corrections. It was to have been an Ode on the occasion of his

brother's marriage, which fixes the date as 1888. It is mentioned in a letter of May 25, whencethe title comes.—I have printed dene for dean (in two places). In l. 9 of poem cover = covert,which should be in text, as G. M. H. never spelt phonetically.—l. 11, of may be at , MS.

uncertain.—page 90, line 16, shoots is, I think, a noun.



73. Thee, God, I come from. Unfinished draft in H. Undated, probably '85, on same sheet withfirst draft of No. 38.—l. 2, day long . MS. as two words with accent on day.—l. 17, above thewords before me the words left with meare written as alternative, but text is not deleted. Allthe rest of this hymn is without question. In l. 19, Yea is right. After the verses printed in textthere is some versified credo intended to form part of the complete poem; thus:

Jesus Christ sacrificedOn the cross. . . .Moulded, he, in maiden's womb,Lived and died and from the tombRose in power and is our Judge that comes to deal our doom.

74. To him who. Text is an underlined version among working drafts in H.—line 6, freed =got rid of, banished. This sense of the word is obsolete; it occurs twice in Shakespeare, cp.Cymb. III. vi. 79, 'He wrings at some distress . . . would I could free 't!'.

FINIS

Gerard Manley Hopkins - The Collected Poems

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